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WESTERN 
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Edition limited to 
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The Acquisition of Political 

Social and Industrial Rights 

of Man in America 




John Bach McMaster 



Cleveland 

Printed at The Imperial Press 

1903 















*! 2> <sr o £ 




Lectures delivered at Western Reserve University 
March 31st, April 1st and April 2nd, 1903, under 
the auspices of the Western Reserve Chapter, 
Daughters of the American Revolution, by JOHN 
BACH McMASTER, Professor of American 
History at the University of Pennsylvania. 



LECTURE I 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

and a long declaration of rights and grievances, 
they adjourned to meet again on the ioth of May, 
1775. But when the ioth of May came, the colon- 
ists had ceased to remonstrate and had begun to 
fight : a shot heard round the world had been fired 
at Concord Bridge, and the country was ringing 
with the news that a gallant British army had 
been chased into Boston, and was there besieged 
by a band of minute men and militia encamped 
on the hills round about. By the mere force of 
circumstances then, this body of remonstrants, 
when they reassembled in Philadelphia, was 
forced to become a Continental Congress, and upon 
them was thrust the duty of conducting the 
country through the opening years of a great war. 

The immediate results of this appeal to arms in 
Massachusetts was the final overthrow of all royal 
authority, and an appeal by the Provincial Con- 
gress of Massachusetts — which had assumed to 
assert all authority in Massachusetts — an appeal 
by it to the Continental Congress for advice. The 
letter sets forth that the trouble under which the 
colony labors for want of " regular government 
is serious, and asks Congress for explicit advice 
concerning the taking up and exercising of the 
powers of civil government, ' ' and pledges Massa- 
chusetts to submit to such a general plan as the 
Congress may direct for the colonies. 

Congress answered that no obedience was due 
to the act of Parliament changing the charter of 
Massachusetts Bay, nor to a governor or lieu- 

[ 3 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

tenant governor bent on subverting instead of 
obeying the charter; that these men were to be 
regarded as absent, and their offices looked upon 
as vacant; that the Provincial Congress should 
write to the towns entitled to representation 
urging them to choose members of the Assembly, 
which Assembly so chosen should elect a Council, 
and that these two bodies should exercise the 
powers of government until a governor of His 
Majesty's appointment would consent to govern 
according to the charter. 

A few months later the delegates from New 
Hampshire presented a letter asking " for the 
advice and direction of Congress with respect to 
the method of administering justice and regulat- 
ing our civil police. ' ' To this Congress replied 
recommending the Provincial Convention of New 
Hampshire ' ' to call a full and free representation 
of the people, and that these representatives, if 
they think it necessary, establish such a form of 
government as in their judgment will best pro- 
duce the happiness of the people. ' ' 

On the following day, November 4, 1775, pre- 
cisely the same advice in precisely the same words 
was given to South Carolina and, before the year 
closed, to Virginia. Early in 1776, some zealous 
whigs of New York wrote to John Adams asking 
that authority be given by Congress to New York 
to form a government. Moved it may well be 
by this appeal, Adams now submitted a resolution 
recommending that all the colonies be advised to 

[ 9 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

form such governments as might be conducive to 
their happiness in particular, and to that of 
America in general. 

The year which had now elapsed since the fight 
at Concord, had been fruitful of events which did 
much to strengthen the rising spirits of the colon- 
ists. The King on his part had declared his 
colonies to be in a state of rebellion; he had 
closed their ports to trade, had refused to receive 
their humble petitions, had sent ships and troops 
to subdue them, and had hired Hessians to aid 
him in this task. Congress, on its part, in ordi- 
nance after ordinance had assumed a sovereignty 
quite incompatible with the idea of allegiance to the 
King and Parliament. The little band of patriots 
gathered around Boston had been turned into the 
Continental Army and provided with a com- 
mander-in-chief. Letters of marque had been 
issued; the Tories had been disarmed, the ports 
had been thrown open to all nations, and a secret 
committee of correspondents were seeking assis- 
tance abroad. In the face of these facts it was 
idle to pretend that any allegiance was still due 
to the King. The resolution of Adams was there- 
fore taken up and adopted, and on the 15th of 
May, 1776, a preamble was added in these words: 

" Whereas, the King of Great Britain has ex- 
cluded the colonies from protection of the crown, 
and given no answer to the humble petition for 
redress ; and whereas the whole force of the King 
is to be used to the ruin of the colonies, it is 

[ 10 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

absolutely inconceivable to reason and to' con- 
science for the people now to take the oaths and 
affirmations to support any government under the 
crown ; and it being necessary to suppress every 
kind of authority under the crown, therefore it is 
recommended to the assemblies and conventions 
of the United Colonies where no government suffi- 
cient for the exigencies of their affairs has been 
established, to adopt such government as shall in 
the opinion of the representatives of the people 
best conduce to the happiness of their constituents 
in particular and Americans in general. ' ' 

But one thing, a formal declaration of indepen- 
dence, now remained to be done; and this Con- 
gress was not slow in doing it. June 7th Mr. 
Lee introduced his resolution declaring the United 
Colonies to be free and independent states. June 
nth Congress appointed two committees, one to 
draft a declaration of independence, and one to 
frame a plan of general government for the repub- 
lic about to be created. July 2nd the resolution 
of Lee was adopted and two days later the declara- 
tion which announced to the world the indepen- 
dence of the United States. 

' * A decent respect for the opinions of mankind, ' ' 
says the Declaration, " required that the causes 
which impelled our forefathers to the separation 
should be declared. ' ' But they went further than 
a mere statement of the specific acts of misgovern - 
ment by King and Parliament which led to this act 
of separation, and in that Declaration announced 

[ 11 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

certain fundamental principles of government 
which they called self-evident truths. 

Up to this point in the contest between the col- 
onies and the mother country the colonies had 
taken their stand chiefly on constitutional grounds. 
They had asserted that their fathers had been 
English subjects ; that in migrating to this coun- 
try they had not gone without the realm and that 
they and their descendants remained English 
subjects ; that one of the rights of an English sub- 
ject was not to be taxed without representation ; 
that it was impossible for them to be represented 
in Parliament, and therefore Parliament could 
not tax them. That ground had been answered 
and fairly well refuted, and in the Declaration of 
Independence the colonists shifted their ground 
from the old doctrine of the constitutional rights 
of the colonies to the theory which had been so 
popular in the early part of the century — the 
theory of Social Compact. Briefly stated that 
was: that before there was any civil government 
man existed in a state of nature ; that in that state 
he was subject to natural laws and was possessed 
of a number of so-called natural rights ; that as 
government had to be created, it was created by 
each individual yielding what he thought neces- 
sary for the good of all — that it was a social 
compact or contract in which each gave up enough 
of his natural rights to permit the establishment 
of organized authority; and that therefore when 
a government proved to be unsatisfactory the 

[ « ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

people had a -natural right to alter or amend it. 
No man, it was further held, in this state of 
nature was subject to any other; that all men are 
equal, not physically or intellectually, but equal 
so far as concerns jurisdiction or authority ; that 
no man is born to rule another. Natural rights 
then, are the basis of all political rights; our 
liberties do not come from charters nor from 
parchments nor from' kings, but from the King 
of Kings. 

What constituted these natural rights was then 
stated distinctly in the Declaration : 

i. That all men are created equal. 

2. All have been endowed by their Maker with 
certain inalienable rights of which they cannot be 
stripped by any power, and of which they cannot 
lawfully deprive themselves. 

3. That among these rights are life, liberty 
and the pursuit of happiness. 

If these are truths it follows that no govern- 
ment can claim allegiance or obedience from man 
unless he agrees to give it ; that all government 
is a contract and that, in the words of the Declara- 
tion, " Government is constituted among men for 
the sole purpose of protecting these rights ; ' ' that 
all governments derive their just powers from the 
consent of the governed, and that when govern- 
ments fail to accomplish the ends for which they 
were instituted, it is the right and duty of the 
people to alter and to abolish them. 

It has become the custom in our time to decry 

[ 13 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

these statements as glittering generalities. They 
are nothing of the kind. You may dissent from 
them, yon ma}- pronounce them totally wrong, 
you ma}' assert that absolute monarchy is the true 
form of government ; yet these principles as laid 
down in the Declaration of Independence are just 
as truly the principles of government by tjie 
people, as the divine right of kings was once the 
foundation of absolute monarchy. 

But the question which concerns us this after- 
noon is, did the fathers really believe — did they 
accept the self-evident truths? Did they embody 
them in the forms of government they now estab- 
lished? With the recommendation of May 15, 
1776, every semblance of obedience to royal 
authority disappeared. The people of each col- 
ony, one by one, acted on the recommendation 
and in eleven of the thirteen colonies, in the course 
of a few years, they formed constitutions and 
governments of their own. With the teachings 
of the Declaration they were perfectly familiar. 
It was read in every city, town and village the 
country over, and it was printed in every news- 
paper. No state paper of the time was so widely 
circulated and so heartily endorsed. It would 
seem therefore no more than reasonable to expect 
that, if the men of 1776, really believed the bold 
assertions it contained, their new constitutions 
would be the complete embodiment of the three 
great rights of man, the rights for which they 
staked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred 

[ 14 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

honor. But an- examination of these state consti- 
tutions reveals the fact that in their formation 
very little regard was paid to the self-evident 
truths, and that the very men who were loudly 
asserting the political equality of man went on 
and set up governments under which political 
equality had no existence. 

These constitutions consist, in almost every 
instance, of a body of political maxims known as 
the Bill or the Declaration of Rights, and an 
assemblage of administrative provisions classified 
as Legislative, Executive and Judicial. The 
political maxims are those which a long and bitter 
experience had led the people of the mother coun- 
try to establish as the great principles of English 
liberty (trial by jury, liberty of the press, habeas 
corpus, freedom of speech, right of petition, no 
excessive bail, and so on), and those which set 
forth the new ideas of government which had 
done so much to bring about the Revolution. 

' ' All men, ' ' says the constitution of New 
Hampshire, " are born equally free and indepen- 
dent ; therefore, all government of right originates 
from the people, is founded on the consent and 
instituted for the general good. All men have 
certain natural, essential and inherent rights 
among which are life, liberty, the acquisition and 
possession of property. ' ' 

11 The end of the institution, maintenance and 
administration of government, " says the constitu- 
tion of Massachusetts, " is to secure the existence 

[ i5 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

of the body politic, to protect it and so secure to 
the individuals who compose it their natural 
rights and the blessings of life. Government is 
instituted for the common good, for the protec- 
tion, safety, prosperity and happiness of the 
people, and not for the profit, honor, and private 
interest of any one man, family or class of men. ' ' 

1 ' All governments ought to be instituted, ' ' says 
the constitution of Pennsylvania, " for the secur- 
ity and protection of the community as such, and 
to enable the individuals who compose it to enjoy 
their natural rights. ' ' 

"All governments," say the constitutions of 
Delaware and Maryland, " of right originate from 
the people, are founded in compact only, and 
instituted solely for the good of the whole ; that 
persons entrusted with the legislative and execu- 
tive powers are the trustees and servants of 
the public. ' ' 

' ' All political power, ' ' says the constitution of 
North Carolina, " is vested in and derived from 
the people only. No man or set of men are 
entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or 
privileges from the community, except in consid- 
eration of great public service. ' ' 

In every instance in these early state constitu- 
tions, the state is presented as created by the 
people, and existing solely for the good of the 
individual. Its sole duty is stated to be to protect 
him in the full enjoyment of his natural and 
inalienable rights. Public officials are declared 

[ 16 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

to be the trustees of the people; the right of 
revolution is inherent in society. In no instance 
is the state presented as the provider of office, 
the creator of monopolies. 

Such being the relation of the state to the indi- 
vidual, what were the relations of the individual 
to the state? All governments, said the Declara- 
tion, derive their just powers from the consent of 
the governed, and this consent it was one of the 
political maxims of the time could only be given 
when the government participated directly in the 
election of the delegates who were to exercise the 
just powers of government. But to break away 
from the customs, usages, traditions of the past, 
and apply these broad doctrines in all their full- 
ness to the present was not possible, and perhaps 
it was not expedient. Religious training and 
prejudice, the time-honored distinctions of rich 
and poor, learned and unlearned, still held sway 
and went very far towards maintaining a govern- 
ing class, exceedingly democratic indeed as 
compared with the ruling classes of other lands, 
but still a class. Nowhere was voting and office 
holding thrown open to all men notwithstand- 
ing this natural right. 

In New Hampshire the voter must be a Protes- 
tant and a taxpayer. Massachusetts required 
him to be possessed of a freehold estate yielding 
an income of three pounds a year, or to have a 
personal estate worth sixty pounds. In Connec- 
ticut the requirement was an annual income of 

[ i7 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

seven dollars from a freehold estate, or real estate 
rated on the tax list as worth $134.00. New York 
required a freehold estate of thirty pounds, or a 
house rent of forty shillings. New Jersey per- 
mitted any person, male or female, black or 
white, native or alien, to vote who owned real 
estate worth fifty pounds. In Maryland the voter 
must have in the county in which he wished to 
vote a freehold of fifty pounds, or personal prop- 
erty of thirty pounds. Virginia limited the 
franchise to such as owned twenty-five acres of 
land, properly planted and with a house thereon 
at least twelve feet square on the foundation, or 
such as were possessed of fifty acres of wild land 
or a freehold or estate interest in a lot in some of 
the towns established by law. North Carolina 
required the payment of a tax. In South Carolina 
the voter must be a free white man, acknowledg- 
ing the being of a God and believing in a future 
state of reward and punishment, and must have 
lived one year in the state, have a freehold of 
fifty acres or own a town lot, or have paid a tax 
equal to the tax on fifty acres of land. In Georgia 
any mechanic, any white male inhabitant owning 
ten pounds of property and paying a tax, not only 
might but must vote under a penalty of five 
pounds. 

In many cases these restrictions were mild and 
probably kept but few men from the polls perma- 
nently. But the right to vote when acquired, 
did not carry with it by any means the right to 

[ 18 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

hold office. To be eligible to the lower house of 
the legislature the voter must be a Protestant and 
have an estate worth one hundred pounds in New 
Hampshire ; a freehold of one hundred pounds or 
personal estate of two hundred pounds, and must 
swear that he believed in the Old and New Testa- 
ment and in a divine inspiration in order to be a 
member of the lower house in Massachusetts. A 
freehold of one hundred pounds above all debts 
was required in New York ; a belief in some Prot- 
estant creed and a personal estate was required 
in New Jersey; while in Delaware he must not 
only have the proper qualifications, but he must 
subscribe to this oath: " I, A. B., do profess faith 
in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ, and in the 
Holy Ghost, one God blessed evermore, and I do 
acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the Old and 
New Testaments, to be given by divine inspira- 
tion. ' ' Maryland required each member of her 
assembly to own a freehold of five hundred pounds 
and subscribe his belief in the Christian religion. 
In North Carolina a member of the house of com- 
mons must be possessed and continue to be 
possessed in fee simple or for life, of a freehold 
of one hundred acres of land and profess belief 
in the being of God and the truth of the Protes- 
tant religion. In South Carolina a representative 
must own five hundred acres and ten negro 
slaves, or real estate worth one hundred and fifty 
pounds sterling clear of all debt. In Georgia he 
must own two hundred and fifty acres of land, or 

[ 19 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

property worth two hundred and fifty pounds and 
be a believer in the Protestant religion, before he 
could be eligible to the legislature. 

For membership in the upper house the qualifi- 
cations were the same in kind as for membership 
in the lower house, but twice as great in quantity. 
The basis of office holding was property. The 
man of small means might vote, but none save 
well-to-do Christians could legislate, and in many- 
states none but a rich Christian could be a gover- 
nor. No Hebrew, no atheist, no Roman Catholic 
could be a governor of New Hampshire, nor of 
New Jersey, nor of South Carolina, and none but 
a Christian in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Dela- 
ware, Maryland and South Carolina. Nor were 
religious qualifications deemed enough. Heavy 
property qualifications were added, for the gover- 
nor must not only be pious but rich. In one state 
he must own property worth one hundred pounds, 
in another five hundred pounds, in another five 
thousand pounds, and in South Carolina ten thou- 
sand pounds. It was indeed true that all govern- 
ments derived their just powers from the consent 
of the governed ; yet under these early state con- 
stitutions, none but taxpaying, property-owning 
men could give that consent from which govern- 
ment derives its just powers. It was indeed true 
that every-where the utmost liberty of conscience 
prevailed ; but the man who did not exercise that 
liberty of conscience in such way as to become 
a Christian or, in some instances a Protestant, 

[ 20 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

could hold no, office of profit or trust under gov- 
ernment. 

What was true of the voter and the office holder 
was equally true of the system of representation. 
In but one state did it rest on population. In 
New England members of the upper house were 
chosen in districts or counties, and were in pro- 
portion to the amount of public taxes paid in 
each ; in New York the senators from each of the 
four senatorial districts were in proportion to the 
number of freeholders owning estates above one 
hundred pounds in value. In Pennsylvania and 
Georgia there was no senate. In Maryland the 
senate was chosen by an electoral college; in 
every other state each county was the basis of 
representation. For the Lower House in every 
state it was the number of taxable polls, or the 
number of duly qualified voters, or the amount 
of taxable property, or the county that deter- 
mined the number of representatives, and in no 
case population. The poor man counted for 
nothing. He was governed, but not with his 
consent, by his property-owning Christian neigh- 
bors. He was one of the people, but he did not 
count as such in the apportionment of representa- 
tion. In short, the broad doctrine that govern- 
ments derived their just powers from the consent 
of the governed, was not accepted by the 
" Fathers. " The most they were ready to admit 
was that all governments derive their just powers 
from the consent of the taxpayer. 

[ 21 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

While the states were thus forming and adopt- 
ing their constitutions, a plan for a government 
for the United States was under discussion in Con- 
gress. To provide such a government as would 
be acceptable to thirteen independent republics, 
differing so widely in climate, in soil, in occupa- 
tion, in everything which makes up the social and 
economic life of a people was no easy matter. 
Some were agricultural, others were commercial, 
a few were both. Some were great states abound- 
ing in population ; some were small states. Some 
had their limits clearly denned ; others laid claim 
to vast stretches of territory which extended 
across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean to 
the Mississippi River. In many cases these 
claims conflicted. Elements so discordant pro- 
duce a conflict of interests and opinion, and 
sixteen months passed before the Articles of Con- 
federation went to the states for approval. Three 
great questions which arose in the course of the 
debate : 

What shall be the vote cast by each state in 
Congress? 

How much shall each state contribute to the 
support of the Confederacy? 

What shall be done with the western lands? 
concern us as bearing directly on the political 
ideas of the time. 

In the discussion of the first question, Virginia 
proposed that population should be the basis of 
representation, and suggested that in determining 

[ 22 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

all questions before Congress, Rhode Island, Dela- 
ware and Georgia should each cast one vote, and 
every other state one vote for every fifty thousand 
white inhabitants, " in order that an equality in 
this national assembly may be preserved as nearly 
as possible, and that those who are bound by 
measures and are to pay taxes demanded by an 
assembly the members of which are elected not 
by all the people but by those of a particular 
district, may have the same proportional number 
of votes as they would have if they were person- 
ally present. ' ' But the idea was far too radical ; 
Virginia and Pennsylvania alone supported the 
motion which was lost. 

Virginia now asked ' ' that each state shall have 
a right to send one delegate to Congress for every 
30,000 of its inhabitants, and in determining 
questions in Congress each delegate shall have 
one vote. ' ' This too was voted down, as was a 
third proposition that the quantum of representa- 
tion for each state ' ' shall be computed by numbers 
proportioned according to its contribution of 
money, or of taxes levied and paid into the public 
treasury towards the annual expenses necessary 
for the support of the nation. ' ' This too failed, 
and each state was given one vote in Congress. 

But the question of representation according to 
population was not to be disposed of in a manner 
so summary. The plan as reported contained 
one article providing for a common treasury, to be 
supplied by the states in proportion to the number 

[ 23 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

of inhabitants of every age, sex and quality, 
except Indians not taxed, and that the number of 
inhabitants should be determined by a triennial 
census. Here was a test case. Here was the 
application of the revolutionary doctrine, no taxa- 
tion without representation. But again the 
fathers rallied and voted it down. It was then 
proposed to make the share of each state propor- 
tional to the value of all property except household 
goods and wearing apparel, and when this failed 
a proposition was adopted declaring that the share 
of each state should be in proportion to the value 
of all lands within its borders granted to or sur- 
veyed for any person with the value of all build- 
ings and improvements added. 

The third contest was a struggle over state 
rights, and was begun by a motion by Maryland 
that Congress have sole and exclusive right and 
power to fix the western boundaries of such states 
as claimed to extend to the South Sea. The states 
with sea-to-sea charters were Massachusetts, Con- 
necticut, Virginia, the two Carolinas and Georgia. 
They voted ' ' no, ' ' of course, and refused to con- 
sent to be stripped of their western lands. But the 
question was one of state rights, and when the vote 
was taken every state save Maryland voted "no. " 
It was then moved that Congress have sole and 
exclusive authority to fix the western limits of such 
states as claimed to the Mississippi, or South Sea, 
and that the land beyond this boundary so fixed 
be laid out into separate and independent states. 

[ 24 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

Again every state save Maryland voted "no." 
To the delegates of the land-claiming states 
who thus united in voting down the resolution, 
the proposition of Maryland undoubtedly seemed 
a jealous attack on their prosperity, by attempt- 
ing to strip them of their western lands and of 
their sovereignty by proposing that Congress 
should fix their boundaries. But there were in 
the Maryland proposition the germs of two polit- 
ical ideas of great moment — that of a splendid 
public domain held in trust by Congress for the 
good of all, and that of new states to be formed 
from this domain and admitted into the union. 
From this position nothing could move Maryland, 
nor did she yield her objections and sign the 
articles until New York, Connecticut and Virginia 
had made tenders of the western lands they 
claimed to own. 

The terms of the cessions required that Con- 
gress should do three things — sell the land and 
use the money to pay the domestic debt of the 
confederation; cut up the territory into states; 
and to admit into the union on the same footing 
as the original states when each had a population 
of sixty thousand free white inhabitants. Some 
time must elapse before there would be sixty 
thousand free white inhabitants in any part of the 
territory, and as during this period such people as 
were in the West must have some kind of govern- 
ment, the United States found itself in the 
position of a mother country, and was called on to 

[ 25 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

frame a plan of colonial government. In so 
doing Congress was perfectly free to adopt what 
form it pleased. Xo restrictions of any sort had 
been imposed. The great ordinance of 1787, for 
the government of the territory of the United 
States northwest of the river Ohio may therefore 
be considered as the complete embodiment of the 
most advanced ideas of government in America. 

Until such time as there were five thousand free 
white males in the territory, which might mean a 
population of twenty-five or thirty thousand souls, 
the governed were not to be consulted. Congress 
was to appoint a governor, three judges and a 
secretary, and these men were to select from the 
statute of any state or states such laws or parts 
of laws as to them seemed proper and proclaim 
them to be the laws of the territory. 

When at last there were five thousand free 
males of full age representative government was 
to begin. A house of representatives was to be 
chosen consisting of one delegate for every five 
hundred free males. By this house ten men were 
to be elected and from them Congress was to 
commission five to serve as a Legislative Council 
which with the House of Representatives consti- 
tuted the Legislature. To be a voter, a man 
must own in fee simple fifty acres of land ; to be 
a representative, two hundred acres; to be a 
member of the Council, five hundred acres. Over 
the Legislature the governor had almost absolute 
power. He could convene, prorogue and dissolve 

[ 26 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

it when in his opinion it seemed expedient. His 
veto was final and could not be overridden ; but 
such laws as he approved were of course subject 
to the veto of Congress. 

Nevertheless, no little progress had been made 
towards the realization of the self-evident truths 
and the riehts of man. There is still a property 
qualification for voters and office-holders, but there 
is no religious test. Representation is not accord- 
ing to counties, or geographical areas, or electors, 
or ratable polls, or the amount of taxes paid 
annually, but according to free males. Slavery 
is prohibited, and the estates of persons dying 
intestate are to be divided equally among the 
heirs, which was not the common practice of the 
states. 

While Congress was framing the Ordinance of 
1787, at New York, the Constitution of the United 
States was in process of making at Philadelphia. 
The proceedings of no body of men that ever 
gathered in our country to form an instrument of 
government are so well worthy of study. The 
delegates to Annapolis and later to Philadelphia 
were brought together in response to the demands 
of the business men of the country, not to form 
an ideal plan of government but such a practical 
plan as would meet the business needs of the 
people. It was called by the people and seven 
states had appointed their delegates before Con- 
gress went through the form of sanctioning the 
meeting. The bitter experiences of ten years 

[ 27 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

made it quite clear that there must be in this 
country one nation or thirteen separate and inde- 
pendent republics. The confederation had utterly 
failed. For a people speaking the same language, 
living under the same country and under the 
same general government, to have among them 
thirteen kinds of regulations of foreign trade and 
commerce, thirteen kinds of regulations of inter- 
state commerce, thirteen kinds of paper money 
issued by thirteen different authorities on thirteen 
different kinds of securities or no security at all, 
each legal tender, and some made so under pains 
and penalties — for any sensible people to expect 
to prosper at home or be respected abroad under 
such conditions was absurd. The domestic debt, 
the price of liberty, was still unfunded, unpro- 
vided for. The foreign debt was falling due in 
annual installments, which were not paid, and the 
interest was annually defaulted. Neither Great 
Britain nor Spain, whose possessions surrounded 
us on the north, the west and the south, and 
whose trade was so important, would enter into 
a treaty of amity and commerce. British soldiers 
occupied our frontier ports from Lake Superior to 
Lake Champlain. Spain held Alabama and Mis- 
sissippi, closed the Mississippi River to American 
trade, and planted her guns and displayed her flag 
on the site of Memphis. A government capable 
of meeting these issues must be strong and vigor- 
ous, and on the men assembled at Philadelphia 
devolved the responsibility of deciding whether 

[ 28 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

there should be a strong and vigorous government 
by the states, or a strong and vigorous govern- 
ment by the people. With the struggles of the 
advocates of each sort of government, and the 
compromises to which in many cases they were 
forced, we are not concerned. The questions for 
us to consider are : Did they pay heed to the inal- 
ienable rights of man, did they establish a 
government deriving its just powers from the 
consent of the governed? 

At a very early stage in the proceedings it was 
decided that the governed should have no voice 
in the election of the executive. The idea of such 
a manner of election drew from the mover of it 
an apology. " I am," said James Wilson of 
Pennsylvania, " almost unwilling to declare the 
mode I wish to take place, being apprehensive 
that it may appear chimerical. I will say how- 
ever that at least in theory, I am for an election 
by the people. ' ' And after he had fully stated 
his plan, every state save Pennsylvania voted 
"no." The people it was said would never be 
well informed as to personal character, would 
never give a majority of their votes to any one 
man, would be led by active and designing men ; 
that it would be as unnatural to refer the choice 
of a proper character for chief magistrate to the 
people as it would be to refer a trial of colors to a 
blind man. The extent of the country, it was 
said, made it impossible for the people to have the 
capacity to judge of the respective pretensions of 

[ 29 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

the candidates. This decision against an election 
by the people by no means settled the manner of 
choice, and twenty different ways were proposed 
one after another before the convention adopted 
the one known to the Constitution. 

And now a new question arose: who shall 
choose the electors? Again a struggle ensued for 
a choice by the people, and again the old argu- 
ments against the people were urged, and eight 
methods were suggested before the convention in 
desperation threw the responsibility back on the 
states, and left them to decide on the methods of 
choosing presidential electors. At the first elec- 
tion, in 1789, three gave the choice to the people 
and eight to the legislatures. In two of them 
the people by their votes nominated candidates 
from whom the legislatures made appointments. 

The great straggle for the right of the governed 
to express their consent was over the election of 
members of Congress. There were those in the 
convention who insisted that the number of repre- 
sentatives should be in proportion to population, 
or according to actual contribution, or to quota of 
contribution, or to the number of free inhabitants, 
or to the rule of the confederation, and that 
representation in the senate should be on the 
same basis as that in the house : and there were 
those who insisted on absolute equality of repre- 
sentation in both branches. This time the friends 
of government by the people stood firm and 
forced that compromise which made representa- 

[ 3o ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

tion in the house proportionate to all free persons, 
including those bound to service for a term of 
years (the redemptioners and bond-servants), and 
three-fifths of the negro slaves. 

Here was a great step forward. But a greater 
yet was taken when the convention decided that 
no restriction should be laid on the suffrage by 
the constitution, but that each state for itself 
should regulate the right of its citizens to vote. 
' ' The electors in each state, ' ' says the Constitu- 
tion, " shall have the qualifications requisite for 
the electors of the most numerous branch of the 
state legislature. ' ' To have defined and limited 
the suffrage would have been to erect against the 
liberalizing tendencies of the day a barrier only 
to be removed by the difficult process of amending 
the Constitution. 

To have established manhood suffrage would 
have been a blow at the state constitutions. To 
leave the Constitution responsive to any change 
in any state limitation of the suffrage, was a prac- 
tical and rational solution of the problem which 
could only be solved in time to come. 

Such in brief were the political rights of man 
on the 4th of March, 1789, when the Constitution 
of the United States went into force. But what 
were his social and industrial rights under the law 
of the land? What, above all, was the condition 
of that great mass of the community which earns 
its bread in the sweat of its brow? 

All manual labor when the Revolution opened 

[ 3i ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

was performed by slaves, by convict servants, by 
redemptioners or by freemen. The negro slave 
in the eye of the law was a chattel, could be 
bought and sold, bequeathed by will, given away, 
mortgaged, or seized in satisfaction of a judg- 
ment. Not a civil right of any kind was his. 
He could not make a contract, nor give testimony 
against a white man in any court, nor acquire 
property in any way. Whatever he found, what- 
ever he made, whatever was given him, reverted 
at once to his master. To teach a slave to write 
was not allowed anywhere ; to teach him to read 
was permitted in a few colonies. 

One step above the slaves were the convict 
bond-servants, or men and women in a state of 
temporary involuntary servitude. These people 
were either political offenders or felon convicts. 
Those guilty of political offenses, as the Scots 
taken in battle in 1650, the prisoners captured at 
the battle of Worcester in 165 1, Monmouth's 
men, 1685, the Scots concerned in the uprising of 
1678, the Jacobins of 17 16, the Scots who went 
out in 1745, were of course of this class of offend- 
ers; and during that period, between 1650 and 
1745, as many as four thousand are known to 
have been sent over to this country. 

The felons formed the great source of supply, 
and had been sent over in very considerable 
numbers from the earliest days of colonization. 
From 1650 down to the Revolution the legislation 
of the colonies is full of acts designed to stop the 

[ 32 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

importation of such persons, robbers, murderers, 
forgers, counterfeiters, clippers of coin, petty- 
thieves, % house-burners, street-walkers. But in 
every case those acts were disallowed by the King 
and council, and the felons came in steadily 
increasing numbers. Maryland and Virginia 
seem to have been especially favored, as tobacco 
planting made a great demand for laborers. One 
historian of Maryland declares that up to the 
Revolution twenty thousand came to that colony 
and half of them after 1750. Another authority 
who has made an exhaustive study of the subject, 
asserts that between 17 15 and 1775, ten thousand 
felons were exported from the Old Bailey Prison 
in London. After the Revolution servants of 
this sort ceased to be sent to America, and even 
to Jamaica and the Barbadoes, and in 1787, Great 
Britain found an outlet in her newly established 
penal colony at Botany Bay. 

But the indentured servant and redemptioner 
did not cease to come when the colonies became 
the United States. Speaking generally, the inden- 
tured servants were men, women and even chil- 
dren who, unable to pay their passage, signed a 
contract called an indenture before leaving the 
old world. This indenture bound the owner or 
master of the ship to transport them to America, 
and bound the emigrant after arrival in America 
to serve the owner, master, or their assigns, for a 
certain number of years. On reaching port the 
owner or master, whose servants they then 

[ 33 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

became, sold them for their passage to the high- 
est bidder, or for what he could get. 

The redemptioner, on the other hand, was an 
immigrant who signed no indenture before em- 
barking, but agreed with the shipping merchant 
that after reaching America he should be given a 
certain time (generally a month) in which to find 
somebody to redeem him by paying the passage 
money, or freight, as it was called. Should he 
fail to find a redeemer within a specified time, the 
ship captain was at liberty to sell him to the 
highest bidder, in which case the redemptioner 
became an indentured servant and was subject to 
the laws governing such cases. 

~en a ship laden with one to three hundred 
such persons arrived, we will say at Philadelphia, 
the immigrants, arranged in a long line, were 
marched at once to a magistrate and forced to 
take an oath of allegiance to the King or, later, to 
the United States, and then marched back to the 
ship to be sold. If a purchaser was not forth- 
coming and they remained on shipboard until the 
month had passed, they were frequently sold to 
speculators who drove them, chained together 
sometimes through the country, from farm to 
farm, in search of a purchaser. 

The contract signed, the newcomer became in 
the eyes of the law a slave, and in both the civil 
and criminal code was classed with negro slaves 
ani Ini^rs None ::uli ~arry wi:h^u: c:zse^: 
of the master or mistress under penalty of an 

[ 34 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

addition of one year's service to the time set forth 
in the indenture. They were worked hard, were 
dressed in the cast-off clothes of their owners, 
and might be flogged as often as the master or 
mistress thought necessary. If they ran away, 
at least two days might be added to their time of 
service for each day they were absent. Father, 
mother and children could be sold to different 
buyers. Such remnants of cargoes as could not 
find purchasers within the time specified, were 
bought in lots of fifty or more by a class of specu- 
lators known as ' ' soul drivers, ' ' who drove them 
through the country like so many cattle and sold 
them for what they would bring. 

In the Middle and Southern States almost all 
labor, skilled and unskilled, was done by slaves, 
redemptioners or indentured servants. The 
advertisements of redemptioners mention weav- 
ers, gardeners, spinners, carpenters, smiths, 
wheelwrights, shoemakers, and school teachers, 
stonecutters, bricklayers, tailors, hatters, harness 
makers — men and women skilled in every sort 
of labor then needed in the country. 

Competition of this sort made the lot of the free 
laborer hard indeed, but it was made harder still 
by the usages of the time. He worked from sun- 
rise to sunset, earned less wages in winter than 
in summer, was paid at irregular intervals, and 
if not paid at all had no lien on the product of his 
labor. If he were so unfortunate as to fall into 
debt, though it were for but a sixpence or a 

[ 35 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

penny, lie might at the will of his creditor be torn 
from his family and cast into jail, there to remain 
until the debt and the prison charges were paid 
or he died of hunger and disease. 

The state of the criminal deserves considera- 
tion, for he seems to have had no rights which 
anybody was bound to respect. Our forefathers, 
on their migration from England brought with 
them and planted in the new world the ideas of 
the treatment of crime and the criminal current 
in the mother country of their day. Their penal 
codes were not their own handiwork, but were 
patterned after the statutes, orders and customs 
of England of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, and are marked all through with the 
barbarity, cruelty and inhumanity of the time. 
The constitutions of six states did indeed declare 
that cruel and unusual punishments should not 
be inflicted, but a very hasty examination of the 
criminal codes of even these states is sufficient to 
show the astonishing changes which have taken 
place within a century in the conception of. 
cruelty. In Massachusetts, Connecticut and 
Rhode Island, in 1789, ten crimes were punish- 
able by death. In Pennsylvania, in 17 18, twelve 
crimes on first convictions and several others on 
second conviction were capital offenses. In 1776 
this list contained twenty crimes, and the second 
conviction for any crime save larceny entailed 
death. In Virginia and afterwards in Kentucky, 
to swear falsely, to destroy or conceal a will, to 

[ 36 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

obtain money or goods on false pretenses, to 
steal a horse, or a record or writ of court, or com- 
mit robbery in the highway, were but a few of 
twenty-seven offenses for which a man or woman 
might suffer death. In New York eleven crimes 
were capital. 

For such misdeeds as did not merit death on 
first conviction, the common punishments were 
branding, whipping, cropping the ears, standing 
on the pillory, sitting in the stocks, or ducking. 
In Maryland each county was required to have 
an assortment of branding irons and use them 
unsparingly. S L on either cheek meant sedi- 
tious libeller. T on the left hand meant thief. 
The man with an R on the shoulder was a vaga- 
bond or rogue, with an F on the cheek a Coiner 
twice convicted. New Hampshire branded her 
burglars with the letter B — on the right for the 
first offense, on the left hand for a second offense, 
on the forehead if the crime were done on the 
Lord's day. Connecticut put an F on the forehead 
of the forger of a deed, and the letter I on the vil- 
lain who sold arms to the Indians, and cut off the 
ears of counterfeiters. In Delaware the blas- 
phemer was flogged, stood upon the pillory and had 
the letter B branded on the forehead. Virginia 
ordained that deceitful bakers, dishonest cooks, 
cheating fishermen, careless fish dressers, should 
lose their ears. 

Publicity, in the opinion of the fathers was a 
great corrective and deterrent of crime. In 

[ 37 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

Pennsylvania therefore the robber and the thief, 
whether man or woman, after receiving at the 
i whipping-post thirty-one lashes well laid on, was 
condemned to wear in plain view on the left 
sleeve of the outer garment, between the shoulder 
and the elbow, a Roman T ; the letter must be 
four inches each way and one inch wide, must be 
of red, blue or yellow cloth, as the magistrate 
pleased, must be worn from sunrise to sunset and 
for a period of six months. If found without the 
letter the penalty for the first offense was twenty- 
one lashes, and for the second, thirty-nine lashes 
and a T branded on the forehead. 

Every pauper who received any aid from any 
county, city or place, as also his wife and chil- 
dren, must wear on the sleeve of the outer 
garment in plain view a large P of red or blue 
cloth, and the first letter of the place to which he 
belonged. 

The whipping-post and the stocks were conspi- 
cuous in every city and large town, and the 
ducking stool was still occasionally used. In 
Pennsylvania counterfeiters of the colonial money 
were to be flogged thirty-one lashes, stood in the 
pillory, and have their ears cut off. Counterfeit- 
ers of the province brands were to be stood for 
two hours in the pillory on a market day. Any 
one who raised the denomination of a bill of 
credit was to have thirty-one lashes, was to be 
put in the pillory, and have his ears cut off and 
nailed to the post. 

[ 38 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

That punishments of these sorts were enforced 
down to and well into the nineteenth century 
there is abundant evidence. In the Essex Gazette 
of Rhode Island in 177 1, William Carlisle was con- 
victed of passing counterfeit dollars and sentenced 
to stand one hour in the pillory on Little Rest 
Hill, and next Friday to have both ears cropped, 
to be branded on both cheeks with the letter R, 
to pay a fine of one hundred dollars and stand 
convicted until sentence performed. In the 
Boston Post Boy of February 1763, it is recorded 
that at the Superior Court held at Charlestown 
last week, Samuel Bacon of Bedford and Merriam 
Fitch, wife of Benjamin Fitch of said Bedford, 
were convicted of being notorious cheats and of 
having by fraud, craft and deceit possessed them- 
selves of fifteen hundred Johannes, the property 
of a third person, were sentenced to be each of 
them " set in the pillory one hour with a paper 
on their breasts and the words ' ' A Cheat ' ' 
written in capitals thereon, to suffer three months 
imprisonment, and to be bound to their good 
behavior. ' ' 

The Boston Chronicle of November 20, 1769, 
says : ' ' We learn from Worcester that on the 8th 
instant one Lindsay stood in the pillory there one 
hour, after which he received thirty stripes at the 
public whipping-post and was then branded in 
the hand. His crime was forgery. " At Salem, 
in 1801, one Hawkins stood on the pillory for an 
hour for the crime of forgery, and had his ears 

[ 39 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

cropped. In 1803, at Boston, two criminals were 
sentenced to stand one hour in the pillory for two 
days, and to be imprisoned two years. 

In September 1787, the Boston court sentenced 
five thieves to be whipped, two set on the gallows, 
and a counterfeiter on the pillory. In 1789, eleven 
were sentenced in one day to be flogged in front 
of the State House. So late as 18 17, in Philadel- 
phia, a sailor was bound to the iron rings outside 
the wall of the Walnut Street Prison and flogged. 
In 1822, a felon was flogged on the campus of Yale 
College in the presence of the students. In 1824, 
a common scold was sentenced by a Philadelphia 
court of sessions to be ducked, but the sentence 
was not carried out because believed to be obso- 
lete. In 181 1, the Superior Court of Georgia, at 
Milledgeville, sentenced one Miss Palmer to be 
ducked in the Oconee, and in 18 17, in the same 
state sentenced another. Later still Judge 
Cranch sentenced Mrs. Anne Royal of Washing- 
ton, D. C, to be ducked in the Potomac. She 
was fined instead. 

As we look back on these times and behold our 
country as it was when Washington took the oath 
of office for the first time, we see that very scanty 
recognition seems to have been sriven to the 
equality of men, or to their inalienable rights to 
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Yet 
it would be the height of injustice to accuse the 
fathers of inconsistency. To have suddenly pro- 
duced such a social condition as they had in mind, 

[ 40 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

to have recklessly removed from the statute books 
every law, to have ruthlessly broken down every 
custom or usage at variance with the new prin- 
ciples they had announced, would have been acts 
of disorganization of the worst kind. But they 
were in no sense disorganizers or anarchists. 
With a steadfast belief in the truth of their prin- 
ciples, they waited but for a chance to apply them 
decently and in order, and when that chance came 
they were applied, and the rights of man were 
steadily extended. 



[ 4i ] 



LECTURE II 



LECTURE II. 

In the course of my remarks I have^endeav- 
ored to pass in review the beginning of constitu- 
tional government in our country in 1775-76: 

1. The enforced assumption of authority by* a 
body of remonstrants, and the creation of the 
Continental Congress. 

2. The reasons for the writing of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, and the bold assertion 
therein of the rights of man and the social contract 
theory of government. 

3. The reasons for the advice of Congress to 
the colonies to take up civil government of their 
own. 

4. The formation, in consequence of this 
advice, of eleven written state constitutions. 

5. The embodiment, in most of these consti- 
tutions, of the declaration of the rights of man 
as asserted in the Declaration of Independence. 

6. The total disregard of the principles of the 
declaration of the rights of man in the body of 
these state constitutions, first, by limiting and 
restricting the franchise, the right to vote, to 
men who could fulfill certain religious and prop- 
erty qualifications, then by increasing religious and 
property qualifications for the holding of office. 

7. The utter disregard of the people, the 
source of all government, by basing representa- 

[ 45 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

tion, not on numbers of people but on geograph- 
ical areas, on taxpayers, qualified electors, or on 
the amount of taxable property. 

8. The struggle for popular representation 
which took place in the conventions or meetings 
which formed the Articles of Confederation, the 
Ordinance of 1787, and the Constitution of the 
United States, the three great charters of govern- 
ment which were formed between the period of 
the Revolution and 1790. 

9. Then we reviewed the legal status of the 
great unrepresented masses, and tried to show 
the utter disregard, in a legal and social point of 
view, of the rights of man, and had gone down 
so far as to pass in review the treatment of the 
criminal and what his rights were. 

Now, of course, to accuse the fathers of incon- 
sistency in this course of action — that is, of say- 
ing one thing and doing another, would be to do 
them an injustice. The declarations which they 
made of the rights of man seemed, from their 
point of view, to be ideals which were to be lived 
up to as soon as possible, and acquired in an 
orderly, systematic way. This had already been 
started before the Revolution closed. We find 
that while it was still raging the first steps were 
taken toward the acquisition, in a broad way, of 
these rights of which there has been so much 
said; that during that period, between the sur- 
render at Saratoga and the adoption of the 
Constitution, five states had abolished slavery by 

[ 46 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

gradual abolition laws; that slavery had been 
forbidden in the western territory by the famous 
Sixth Article of the Ordinance, and that some 
reforms were even started in a social as well as in 
a legal way. 

These of course were great steps forward, but 
there were greater still in the next period of ten 
years that closed the century. Reform was the 
order of the day, and in the decade which followed 
the adoption of the Constitution, these inalienable 
rights of man were still further extended. Dur- 
ing that period New Hampshire cast away the 
religious test once exacted of her governor and 
legislators, and took off poll taxes, and put the 
ballot in the hands of every free male of full age. 
Pennsylvania abolished the test oath once required 
of her legislators. Delaware enfranchised every 
free male twenty-one years old, and ceased to ask 
of her office-holders if they believed in the trinity 
and the divine inspiration of the Scriptures. 
South Carolina removed the religious qualification 
from voters, ceased to require all members of the 
House of Representatives to be Protestant, and 
greatly reduced the property qualifications for 
officeholding. Georgia removed the religious test 
for civil office, and the property qualifications for 
voters, gave the ballot to all free white citizens 
who had paid a tax, made population the basis of 
representation, and defined population as all white 
persons and three-fifths of the persons of color. 
The constitution of Vermont provided for man- 

[ 47 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

hood suffrage ; and required no property qualifica- 
tions for officeholding. Kentucky gave the ballot 
to every free white male, and had neither property 
nor religious qualifications for office-holders. 
Tennessee, of the new states, alone remained 
unresponsive to the spirit of the age. Her office- 
holders were required to own property, to believe 
in the existence of God and a future state of 
rewards and punishments, and her voters must 
also own a freehold. Of all the states west of 
the mountains, she was the only one that adopted 
in all their rigor the old restrictions on the sub- 
ject. In general it may be said that Church and 
State were separated, that property qualifications 
were beginning to be reduced, and that the new 
democratic doctrine of manhood suffrage was 
gaining ground. 

In the constitution of Pennsylvania were these 
words : ' ' The penal laws as heretofore used shall 
be reformed by the legislature of the state as 
soon as may be, and punishments made in some 
cases less sanguinary and in general more propor- 
tionate to the crimes. " While the war raged this 
injunction went unheeded, but by the law of 1787, 
three offenses theretofore punishable with death, 
were made punishable by the forfeiture of the 
real and personal estate of the offender and con- 
finement at hard labor ; all barbarous punishments 
were abolished, and the streets of Philadelphia 
ceased to be swept by men chained to wheelbar- 
rows or dragging logs chained to their ankles. 

[ 48 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

In 1794, the death penalty was abolished save as 
a punishment for murder in the first degree, and 
in 1795, flogging was abolished and confinement 
in a cell with bread and water diet substituted. 
The rights even of criminals to life and liberty 
were gaining recognition. Connecticut in 1791, 
abolished cropping and branding, and provided 
that burglary, arson, forgery and horse stealing 
should no longer be punishable with death. In 
1788, New York abolished the old medieval plea 
of "benefit of clergy," and in 1796, abolished 
capital punishment for fourteen crimes and limited 
it to murder and treason. Whipping for minor 
crimes was abolished at the same time. 

Quite as remarkable was the reform in the 
treatment of criminals. If the descriptions of the 
jails and prisons of the eighteenth century are 
but partially true, they must have exceeded in 
horror the dungeons of medieval Europe. At 
Simsbury, Connecticut, was the Newgate prison, 
in an old worked -out copper mine on the hills. 
The entrance was down a shaft by a ladder to the 
caverns. In these were the cells in which were 
often confined from thirty to one hundred con- 
victs, who each night were chained by the feet to 
the floor and by their necks to the wall. The 
foulness of this den surpasses description. At 
Northampton, Massachusetts, was a dungeon four 
feet high without windows. At Worcester was 
another such dungeon, said to be but three feet 
high. The old Market Street Prison in Philadel- 

[ 49 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

phia was presented by the Grand Jury in 1787, as 
a nuisance. Men and women of all ages were 
thrust into one large compartment, and with them 
were confined others held as witnesses or guilty of 
no greater offense than an honest inability to pay 
their debts. 

No records of the past furnish more horrible 
reading than those in which are told the horrors 
of the debtors' prisons. For the smallest debt 
possible, though it were but a cent, the body of 
the debtor, whether man or woman, could be 
seized by the creditor and cast into jail, there to 
remain till the sum was paid in full. By an old 
law which went back to the days when Pennsyl- 
vania was a colony, magistrates were allowed 
cognizance without appeal of debts under forty 
shillings, or $5.33. When the debt exceeded 
that sum the debtor was entitled to a stay of 
execution. But no such privilege was accorded 
the wretch who owed a sixpence or a shilling, 
and who might if his creditor chose, be dragged 
to jail on what were truly called " spite actions." 
Once behind the bars his lot was harder than that 
of the lowest criminals. Thieves and counterfeit- 
ers, murderers and felons of every sort were fed 
and cared for at the expense of the state, but for 
the luckless debtor no such provision was made- 
The food he ate, the clothes that covered him, were 
provided, if provided at all, by his friends or by 
the charity of the public or by some Society for 
Alleviating the Misery of Public Prisons. The 

[ 5o ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

room in which he was confined with scores of 
hardened offenders was utterly without furniture 
of any sort. In it were neither chairs, tables, 
cots, nor so much as a bench. He sat on the 
floor, ate off the floor, and at night lay down to 
sleep on the floor without a blanket to cover him. 
Against this violation of the rights of man to 
liberty, society at last rebelled, and in 1794, a 
change for the better was ordered. ' ' Whereas, ' ' 
said the law, " many persons confined in the 
prison called the debtors' apartment in the city 
of Philadelphia are so poor as to be unable to 
procure food for their sustenance, or fuel, or 
clothing in the winter season, and it is inconsis- 
tent with humanity to suffer them to want the 
common necessaries of life, the state must " — we 
might suppose the law would say " abolish im- 
prisonment for debt under forty shillings, ' ' — but. 
the law said nothing of the kind — the state must 
order the inspector to provide fuel and blankets 
for such debtors as by reason of their poverty 
could not get them, and should allow each debtor 
seven cents a day for food ! For twenty years the: 
community seems to have thought this was all 
humanity required, and no further change was 
made in the condition of the debtors' prison until 
1814. 

At the opening of the nineteenth century, there- 
fore, the political rights of man had been materi- 
ally advanced, the abolition of slavery was well 
under way, the Northwest Territory had been 

[ 5i ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

dedicated to freedom, cruel and barbarous forms 
of punishment were beginning to disappear, and 
some reforms in the treatment of criminals and 
debtors had just been started. 

The first decade of the new century was pre- 
eminently a period of attempted social rather than 
of political reform. The decade opened with the 
triumph of democracy. The election of Mr. 
Jefferson was in no sense a mere political victory 
at the polls, the success of one party over another. 
It marks an epoch in our history. It was the 
placing in power of a party which from its very 
origin in 1792, was the pronounced advocate of 
the rights of man and the doctrines of the Dec- 
laration of Independence. In the opinion of 
every follower of Jefferson, every follower of 
Washington was a monarchist and aristocrat. 
The attempt to give the president a title, the 
secret sessions of the senate, the gowns of the 
judges, the exclusive levees of the president, and 
the coach with outriders; the annual speech to 
Congress, in imitation of the king's speech from 
the throne; the ball on the president's birth- 
night — were all of them sure signs of a leaning 
towards aristocracy. The funding system, the 
great national debt, the national bank , were mon- 
archical institutions which stamped the ideas of 
the party responsible for them. 

On the other hand, every follower of Jefferson, 
in the eyes of the Federalists was a Jacobin, a 
leveller, a socialist. We should expect that when 

[ 52 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

this much reviled party came to power a great 
movement of democracy would take place, that 
all the evils which were portrayed by the Federal- 
ist party would fall upon the country, and that 
the rights of man would be very greatly extended. 
But nothing of the sort occurred. Indeed, the 
party of the rights of man had not been many 
months in power when Louisiana was purchased, 
and they were called on to frame a government 
for the Territory of Orleans. And what sort of 
government was given to the Territory of Orleans? 
The president was authorized to appoint annually 
without consulting the senate in any way, thirteen 
discreet landowners to form a council. This 
council met when the governor summoned it, and 
went home when he dismissed it. It could not 
frame a law but could merely criticize such laws 
as the governor would please to lay before it. 
Not an official of any sort was elected, not a vote 
was given. The consent of the governed, from 
which all governments derive their just powers, 
was not even asked. Yet this bill which estab- 
lished this government was signed by the man 
who wrote the Declaration of Independence. 

Yet there was some progress made in the polit- 
ical rights of man elsewhere. New Jersey did 
away with her property qualification for voters, 
and established manhood suffrage by the simple 
process of declaring that her constitution did not 
mean what it said. Maryland, too, adopted man- 
hood suffrage. Ohio gave the ballot to all white 

[ 53 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

male inhabitants of full age who paid a tax, and 
made representation proportional to the number 
of white male inhabitants above the age of 
twenty -one. 

The great feature of the decade, however, was 
the struggle for industrial rights. From such 
statistics of the pay of unskilled labor in 1800, as 
can now be gathered, it appears that wages 
differed in the three great belts along which popu- 
lation was moving westward. The highest rates 
were paid in the Xew England belt, which 
stretched across the country from Massachusetts 
to Ohio. The lowest rates prevailed in the southern 
belt, which extended from the Carolinas to 
Louisiana. In each of these bands, again, wages 
were lowest on the Atlantic seaboard and, increas- 
ing rapidly in a western direction, were greatest 
in the Mississippi valley. They varied again with 
the sex of the laborer, for men were paid most and 
women least. They rose and fell with the seasons 
of the year, for there was one rate for winter 
when the days were short, and another for summer 
when the days were long, and a third for harvest 
time when work was plenty and the laborers few. 
And they varied with the conditions of labor, 
being greatest when the workman fed and lodged 
himself, and lowest when he was fed, lodged and 
provided with grog by his employers. 

Thus, in the district of Maine, at Haverhill and 
about Boston, laborers when fed, were paid seven 
dollars per month in winter and ten in summer. 

[ 54 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

Passing westward the scale rose, and at Spring- 
field men were paid nine dollars, at Stonington 
ten dollars, at Stockbridge twelve, at Catskill 
thirteen, at Hudson fourteen per month, provided 
in each case they fed themselves. In the Genesee 
country and along the Lakes hiring by the month 
was not common, and there the unskilled work- 
man was paid one dollar a day for laboring from 
sunrise to sunset. Throughout Central Pennsyl- 
vania eight dollars per month of twenty-six 
working days was paid to farm hands, when fed 
and lodged. Boatmen on the Ohio received one 
dollar per day. In the southern belt the negro 
was the chief laborer and when he was hired out, 
as was the case in all the towns, his owner was 
paid eighty dollars per year. On the Mississippi 
the boat hands were fed and paid one dollar per 
working day. 

Between 1800 and 18 10, the spread of popula- 
tion, the increase in the number of firms, the 
rush of men into the merchant marine, raised the 
pay of the unskilled laborer very perceptibly. 
From the estimates of the cost of internal im- 
provements, from the pay-rolls of turnpike com- 
panies, from town records, from private diaries, 
from newspaper advertisements, it appears that 
during this period men who could drive piles, or 
build roads, or dig ditches, or pave streets, or 
tend a machine in any of the factories, or were 
engaged in transportation, were paid from a dollar 
to a dollar and a third per day. One advertise- 
rs ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

ment for thirty men to work on the road from 
Genesee River to Buffalo offers twelve dollars 
a month, food, lodging and whiskey every 
day. 

The wages of skilled workmen, however, under- 
went no such increase. A few classes of artisans 
greatly in demand, as ship-carpenters, were paid 
two dollars per day. But they were the excep- 
tion, and such trades as had labor organizations 
now attempted to force up wages by strikes. 
Labor organizations for benevolent purposes 
solely, were characteristic of the opening years of 
the century, and indeed nothing is more charac- 
teristic of the opening years of the nineteenth 
century than the rapidity with which benevolent 
societies of all sorts came into existence. Such 
as were purely labor organizations were, in gen- 
eral,, of two sorts : societies composed of men of 
one craft living in one city, and societies made 
up of artisans following these trades. Associa- 
tions of journeymen of one craft were, at first, 
for benevolent and charitable purposes only. 
But in the flush times of 1800 to 1810, they became 
agitators for the rights of labor. Thus in 1800, 
the Federal and Union Society of Journeymen 
Tailors in Philadelphia in a long address to the 
public, complain of the low wages they are paid, 
of the unjust conduct of their employers, who 
give out work to women and indifferent trades- 
men, who are glad to work for the lowest wages. 
They declare that they will not serve such 

[ 56 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

masters and give the names of nine offending 
employers. 

Four years later the journeymen tailors in 
Baltimore who were receiving seven shillings and 
sixpence for making a coat or a waistcoat, or a 
pair of knee-breeches, went on strike and forced 
up their pay to eight shillings and ninepence per 
job ; and secured such a system of extras that what 
had been four jobs counted as eight. Almost at 
the same time the journeymen cordwainers of 
Philadelphia struck against a rate of wages which 
made it impossible by working from sunrise to 
sunset to earn more than eleven dollars per week. 
But the strike of that year was stoutly resisted, 
and the strikers brought to trial in the mayor's 
court, charged with conspiracy to raise their 
wages. Just at that moment the Aurora was 
engaged in an attack on the English common law, 
which a judge had declared to be in force in Penn- 
sylvania, and as the indictment had been obtained 
under the common law, Duane made the cause of 
the shoemakers his own. Among the blessings 
promised mankind by the Revolution was, he 
said, the emancipation of industry from the fet- 
ters forged by luxury, laziness, aristocracy and 
fraud. Hitherto the people had traveled the level 
road to equal justice. No monopoly had been 
tolerated save patent rights. Of all the barbarous 
principles of feudalism entailed on us by England, 
none was left but slavery, and even this would be 
greatly restricted in 1808. Yet would it be 

[ 57 ] 



■ 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

believed at the very time when the state of the 
negro was about to be improved, attempts were 
being made to reduce the whites to slavery. Was 
there anything in the Constitution of the United 
States or in the Constitution of Pennsylvania, 
which gave one man a right to say to another 
what should be the price of his labor? There 
was not. It was by the English common law 
that such things became possible. When the 
trial was over and the men found guilty of a com- 
bination to raise their wages, the defeated jour- 
neymen appealed for help to a sympathetic public. 
* ' The journeymen cordwainers of Philadelphia, ' * 
so runs their appeal, ' ' respectfully inform the 
inhabitants that they have opened a Boot & Shoe 
Warehouse at 44 S. Third Street. The unprece- 
dented trial which issued in their conviction, as 
well as the unfortunate circumstances in which 
they find themselves after so long a contest, are 
the reasons which induce them to make trial of 
the public liberality to save themselves and their 
families from abject poverty." 

A few years later, in 1808, the journeymen 
tailors a second time struck at Baltimore. Each 
side appealed to the impartial public. The 
journeymen demanded ten shillings per job or 
nine dollars per week, which was no more, they 
said, than was paid to the common laborer, who 
had not spent an hour in learning his business, 
while they had spent an apprenticeship of seven 
years in learning theirs. The master tailors 

[ 58 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

answered that the journeymen were becoming 
high-handed. Not only had they refused to work 
at the old wages, but they had forced men who 
were willing to work to stop, and had threatened 
to tar and feather any lawyer who prosecuted 
them. Few masters in the city made a thousand 
suits a year, and none were paid more than seven 
dollars for making" one. To yield to the demand 
of the journeymen was therefore impossible; 
unless gentlemen were willing to pay more for 
their clothes. The end was a compromise. 

From Baltimore discontent spread to New York, 
and in October 1809, the cordwainers of that city 
went out on strike. The society was well organ- 
ized, had on its rolls about one hundred and 
eighty-six members, and seems to have been 
careful to enforce its rules, some of which were 
most tyrannical. Every journeyman coming to 
the city must join the society, or a strike against 
the shop where he was employed would follow. 
When he did join the shop he ceased, so far as 
his trade was concerned, to be a freeman. He 
could not agree with his employer as to the wages 
for which he would work. He could not remain 
in a shop if the master cordwainer employed an 
apprentice who was not a member of the society, 
or employed more than two apprentices who were 
members of the society. If a member broke any 
of the rules a demand was made on his employer 
for his discharge, and if not complied with a 
strike was ordered against the shop. Strikes of 

[ 59 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

this kind seem to have been common. One hap- 
pened in 1809, but the firm sent their work to 
other shops. The journeymen found it out, and 
a general strike was ordered. The masters 
followed the example set in Philadelphia — the 
strikers were arrested and tried for conspiracy to 
raise their wages. The case came on in the 
mayor's court in 1809. DeWitt Clinton was then 
mayor. His term was nearly ended, and not 
wishing to antagonize either party, he twice post- 
poned decision. In April, 18 10, Jacob Radcliff 
succeeded him, and not having heard the argu- 
ment made before Clinton, put off the case to a 
special session in July 1810. The journeymen 
were then found guilty, admonished by the 
mayor, and fined one dollar each with costs — 
which the mayor promptly paid ! 

Next came the cordwainers of Albany, eighty 
in number. They too demanded an increase of 
wages, and when it was refused went out on 
strike. Thereupon the master cordwainers in- 
serted in the Boston, Hartford, New York and 
Philadelphia newspapers an advertisement offer- 
ing employment to two hundred and fifty journey- 
men. But the Albany strikers inserted in the 
same paper a card headed ' ' Caution, ' ' in which 
they declared that two hundred and fifty men 
were not needed in Albany ; that the purpose of 
the masters was to bring a great crowd of appli- 
cants to the city, select the best of the lot and 
force them, through fear of competition and of 

[ 60 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

being left in a strange city without employment, 
to accept a mere pittance as wages. 

The second decade of the century was pre-emi- 
nently a period of constitution making. During 
it seven states entered the Union, and one of the 
old states, Kentucky, made her first constitution. 
The hard times on the seaboard, the commercial 
and industrial depression which followed the close 
of the second war with Great Britain, sent a wave 
of population over the mountains to the Missis- 
sippi Valley, and built up, in the short period of 
five years, the states of Indiana, Illinois, Alaba- 
ma, Mississippi and Missouri. A sixth, Louisiana, 
was the direct result of the Louisiana purchase. 
A seventh, Maine, had heretofore been part of 
Massachusetts. In every one of these states the 
rights of man were broadly recognized in their 
constitutions. Four gave the ballot to white 
males. Two restricted the franchise to free white 
males who paid a tax. Two based representation 
in the lower branch of the legislature on white 
population, three on white males, two on the 
voting population. The old idea that taxation 
should be the basis of representation was rapidly 
giving way to the new one. That all men should 
vote, that the people should be represented, and 
not freehold estates, or personal property, or 
political areas or counties or towns, were now fast 
becoming self-evident truths. Some of the new 
states made truth a good defense in libel suits. 
Some provided that the estates of suicides should 

[ 61 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

be divided equally among the heirs, just as in the 
case of natural death. By an old law of New 
Jersey, the estates of intestates were to be so 
divided that each male should receive twice as 
much as each female heir. But the day of equal 
rights had dawned and yielding to the spirit of 
the times, New Jersey repealed her old law and 
in a new one ordained that the estates of persons 
who left no will should be divided equally among 
the heirs. Other states abolished imprisonment 
for small debts. 

The last half of the decade was especially favor- 
able to the extension of the rights of man, for 
never had the suffering of the weaker, poorer and 
dependent part of the community attracted so 
much attention. The hard times caused by the 
second war with Great Britain were made harder 
yet by the ruin of trade, commerce and agricul- 
ture which followed the downfall of Napoleon and 
the peace. The splendid carrying trade between 
the powers of Europe and their new world col- 
onies was gone. The fine market for the food 
products of the United States, built up by two 
and twenty years of almost continuous warfare, 
was gone. Our vessels were shut out of the Brit- 
ish West Indies. The currency was in disorder. 
British competition had all but ruined manufac- 
tures, and our country entered on four years of 
the worst times it has ever known. The boldest 
and most enterprising of the sufferers fled from 
the seaboard states to the Mississippi Valley, 

[ 62 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

where government land could be bought for two 
•dollars an acre and paid for in installments ; and 
where the purchaser was exempt for five years 
from state taxation ; but the weaker remained to 
swell the poorhouses, the debtors' prisons and 
the jails. 

From documents presented to the Senate of 
New York in 1817, it appeared that the keeper of 
the debtors' prison in New York City certified 
that, during 18 16, 1,984 debtors were confined, 
and that upwards of 600 were always in the jail 
or on its limits. The sheriff of the county certi- 
fied that 1,129 were i n prison for debts under 
fifty dollars, that of these 729 owed less than 
twenty-five dollars each, and that every one of 
them would have starved to death but for the 
kindness of the Humane Society. Indeed, he had 
more than once been forced to buy fuel with his 
own money to keep them from freezing. One 
man who had been confined for a debt of fifty 
dollars had remained in jail three years, and dur- 
ing this entire time had been fed and clothed by 
the Humane Society. Another debtor had been 
imprisoned for six years and supported by charity. 
A typical case occurred in Vermont which illus- 
trates the gross injustice of the system. The 
debtor owed a firm of two, fifty-four cents. The 
two members of the firm divided the debt, and 
each had the debtor imprisoned for twenty-seven 
cents. The costs in each action were : Execution, 
$1.75; officer's fees, $2.18; jailor's fees, 50 cents; 

[ 63 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

citation, 34 cents; service, $1.25; commissioner's 
fees, $1.25. Total, $7.27. The total costs in 
both cases were $14.54. If the poor man could 
not pay the original debt of 54 cents it was idle 
to expect him to pay $14.54 costs in addition. 
But revenge is sweet and to jail he went. 

In the face of such evidence, the legislature of 
New York relented, and in 181 7, forbade the im- 
prisonment of debtors for sums less than $25.00. 
This led the way and state a^ter state followed. 
In 1 8 18, New Hampshire exempted her inhabi- 
tants from arrest for debts under $13.33. A year 
later Vermont abolished imprisonment for debts 
under $15.00. Pennsylvania and Kentucky were 
not willing to go so far, yet each amended her law 
and forbade the imprisonment of women for debts 
of any amount. 

In states where public opinion was indifferent, 
the horrors of the debtors' prison continued to 
grow worse and worse. A Report of the Society 
for the Relief of the Distressed, published in Bos- 
ton, sets forth that between January 1820, and 
April 1822, 3,492 persons were imprisoned for debt 
in Boston; that 2,000 were deprived of their 
liberty for sums less than $20.00 ; that 430 of these 
were women, and that the suffering caused to the 
families of those in prison affected more than 
10,000 human beings. The agents of the society 
found a woman in the prison who owed $3.60, and 
for this sum had been dragged from her home and 
two children under three years of age. One 

[ 64 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

debtor had been confined thirty years, and when 
the society brought his case to light his friends 
had utterly forgotten him. But they came nobly 
to his aid, and raised the $3,000 necessary to pay 
the jail fees and costs that had accumulated 
during the long period of imprisonment. 

The Report of the Boston Prison Discipline 
Society for 1828, cites the case of a mechanic sent 
to jail for a debt of $5.00 contracted at the grocer's 
while he lay ill with a fever. The keeper of the 
debtor's prison in Philadelphia reported in 1828,. 
that during the year 1,085 persons had been 
confined ; that the sum total of their debts was 
$25,409; that the amount recovered from prison- 
ers by creditors was $295.00, and that the cost to 
the community for maintaining the prison and 
the debtors was $285,000. The next year, i829 > 
thirty-two persons were in jail in Philadelphia for 
debts under one dollar, and in the thirty prisons 
of the state were 595 persons owing debts of from 
one to five dollars. In 183 1 there were in Phila- 
delphia forty debtors imprisoned for the gross 
sum of twenty-three dollars. One man owed two 
cents, another seventy-two cents. Seven were 
confined 172 days for $2.84, and the only debt 
recovered during fifteen months was one for 
seventy-five cents. In the Arch Street Prison 
100 debtors per month were received. No atten- 
dance nor medicine were provided for the sick, 
no beds, no clothing were supplied them. " A 
bed, ' ' says the report, * ' is seldom seen in this 

[ 65 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

prison. No provision is made by law for either 
sex. though some 4.500 are sent here annually. 
It is a common receptacle tor all untried prison- 
ers. Robbers, vagrants, petty thieves, burglars 
are here conhned with debtors and witnesses. In 
New Jersey food, bedding and fuel were provided 
for criminals, but for debtors :::ly walls, bars and 
belts. Many of the debts are described as ' ram 
debts ' : they had been incurred at the grog-shops 
ana corner groceries. 

Bad as all this was. the condition of the debtor 
was steadily improving. If it was true that man 
was entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness as three of his inalienable rights, then 
liberty was not to be restrained nor the pursuit 
of happiness prevented, save in punishment of 
crimes of the most serious nature. Admitting 
this to be true, imprisonment for debt save 
where fr. .s shown or suspected, was abol- 

tshed in Kentucky in 1S21. in Oleic in iS^S, in 
New Jersey and Vermont in 1 S3 o. in Maryland, 
for debts less than thirty dollars, in 1S30. Mas- 
sachusetts, in 1S31, exempted all males from 
imprisonment for debts under ten dollars, and 
females for debts of any amount. Xew York, 
after a long and bitter contest fought out in the 
press and in the legislature, abolished imprison- 
ment for debt in 1S32. Connecticut followed in 
1 S3 7. Louisiana in 1S40, Missouri in 1845, an( ^ 
Alabama in 1848. 

Meantime the political and industrial rights of 

[ 66 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

man were being greatly extended, even in the old 
and conservative states. Under the constitution 
of New York, framed in 1777, the males were 
arranged in three great classes : those who could 
not cast a vote for any state officer, the twenty- 
pound freeholders and forty-shilling renters who 
could vote for members of Assembly, and the 
one -hundred-pound freeholders who were electors 
of assemblymen, senators and lieutenant-governor 
and governor. But the narrow interpretation 
which the law placed on the word ' ' freeholder ' ' 
deprived of a vote many a man entitled to it. In 
the eye of the law a man who possessed a piece 
of real estate worth ^20 or ^100, that is, $50.00 
or $250.00, was entitled to the franchise. But a 
man who held an estate in a farm or city lot for 
nine hundred and ninety-nine years, was a lease : 
holder and could not vote, though the land was 
worth thousands of dollars. In this class were 
thousands of farmers who as lessees of the great 
Dutch manors held their land for nine hundred 
and ninety-nine years. A second class of disfran- 
chised landholders were the men who had pur- 
chased their farms on the installment plan from 
the Holland Land Company or the Pultney and 
Hornby estates. In place of selling in fee simple 
and taking back a mortgage, these great land- 
owners would sell on long credit with payments 
at certain intervals, and execute a contract to 
convey by deed when the last installment had 
been paid. Were or were not these " equitable 

[ 67 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

freeholders, ' ' as they were called, trtie freeholders 
within the meaning- of the law and entitled to 
vote ? The common belief was that they were 
not, and they cast no votes. Nevertheless, a stat- 
ute had been enacted which permitted them to 
act as jurors. But a juror must be a freeholder, 
and the question of the status of the equitable 
freeholder became more complicated than ever. 
In other parts of the state it was a common cus- 
tom to give a deed and take back a mortgage as 
security for payment. Who owned such a piece 
of land, the mortgagor or the mortgagee? With 
which did the freehold rest? The law said with 
both, and gave a vote to the man who happened 
to be in actual possession. 

The doubt cast on the meaning of ' ' freeholder ' ' 
by these statutes, the disfranchisement of fifty 
thousand taxpaying farmers, and the steadily 
growing belief that manhood suffrage was the 
true principle of democratic government made 
this state of affairs unendurable, and in 182 1, a 
convention to amend the constitution gathered at 
Albany. That the old property qualification for 
electors of governor and assembly should be 
abolished was generally conceded. But a strong 
minority insisted that in the senate property 
should be represented and that no man should 
vote for a senator who did not have in his own or 
his wife's right an interest, in law or in equity, 
in lands or tenements in the state to the value of 
two hundred and fifty dollars. Government, it 

[ 68 } 



^ 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

was argued, is founded for the protection of life, 
liberty % and property. Each, therefore, ought to 
be represented so as to ensure its protection. It 
was the opinion of our ancestors that there should 
be two branches in the legislative department, to 
be mutual checks upon each other. But the 
amendment offered to this convention is calculated 
utterly to do away with that safeguard which 
these checks had raised. If the members of the 
senate are elected by the same persons, possessed 
of the same sentiments, views and passions, and 
the same interests and objects as those who elect 
the popular branch, it will result that although 
they meet in separate chambers, they will be 
governed by the same feelings and will cease to 
be the least possible check on the other branch 
■of the legislature. 

Should this amendment succeed, it was further 
argued, not only the same class will elect, but 
that class will be extended, and then where will 
be the security of the landed interests of the 
state? Suppose a legislature thus elected should 
think fit to levy all the taxes and impose all the 
burdens of the government upon the landed 
interests only, what power could prevent them? 
' ' Sir, ' ' said the speaker, ' ' we are legislating for 
posterity and our votes should have reference to 
the permanence of the government. I will go as 
far as any man to extend the right of suffrage, 
when there is a probable prospect that it will be 
exercised in a pure and independent manner. Is 

[ 6 9 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

not property desirable? Is it not worth protect- 
ing? All that goes to embellish or render society 
valuable depends upon it. Churches and hospi- 
tals are erected and schools established by prop- 
erty, and every government that has the interests 
and prosperity of the governed at heart must feel 
bound to protect it. ' ' 

' * I am not, ' ' said Chancellor Kent, ' ' prepared 
to annihilate all distinction and cause all to bow 
before the right of universal suffrage. This 
democratic principle cannot be contemplated 
without terror. We have seen its career in 
Europe, and their experience should be to us a 
voice of warning. It would be madness to expect 
exemption from those passions by which other 
nations have been first inflamed and then de- 
stroyed. The senate is the sheet-anchor of the 
people's safety, and without it the agricultural 
interest is committed to the winds. In the hands 
of moderate and small farmers liberty is not likely 
to be lost. In that body will be found honesty, 
independence, temperance and justice. They are 
the surest guardians of property, and they con- 
stitute the firmest basis of national power. 

" It is to protect this important class that the 
senate should be preserved. It should be the 
representative of property, of landed interests, 
and its security against the caprice of the motley 
crowd of paupers, emigrants, journeymen manu- 
facturers, and those undefined classes of inhab- 
itants a state and city like ours is calculated to 

[ 7o ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

invite. Universal suffrage jeopardizes property 
and puts, it into the power of the poor and the 
profligate to control the affluent. Shall every 
department of the government be at the disposal 
of those who are often ignorant of the importance 
and nature of the right they are authorized to 
assume? The poor man's interest is always in 
opposition to his duty, and it is too much to 
expect of human nature that interest will not be 
consulted. And surely that class and description 
of persons having the power in one branch of the 
legislature to forbid the passage of a law they 
think injurious to their personal right, are safe 
and have no reason to complain. ' ' In the end it 
was decided that senators must be freeholders. 

The same contest raged over the question of 
suffrage. The committee which reported to the 
convention abolished all existing distinctions, and 
proposed to give the ballot to every white man 
who paid a tax in money or in service, who worked 
one day per annum on the high roads, or served 
in the militia. But this was not going far enough,, 
and demands were at once made for the inclusion 
of the black men. 

That all men are born free and equal, it was 
said, is a maxim true only in a state of nature. 
In society this general equality is restrained for 
the public good. On this principle the blacks are 
excluded. They are required to bear no burdens, 
perform no duties. The blacks are a peculiar 
people, unacquainted with civil liberty and incap- 

[ 7i ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

able of appreciating its benefits. We exclude 
aliens, we exclude minors, we exclude the better 
part of creation — woman — and no complaints 
are made. Yet these are all " born free and 
equal. ' ' It was idle to cite the Declaration of 
Independence to prove that the blacks are pos- 
sessed of certain inalienable rights. The right 
of voting is not a natural right. A natural right 
is one born with us. No man is born twenty-one 
years old, therefore all restraint put on the right 
of voting during the period of nonage is usurpa- 
tion and tyranny. This confusion arises from 
mixing natural and acquired rights. The right 
of voting is resorted to merely as a means of 
securing our natural rights. Your law says that 
jurors shall be freeholders. Was a negro free- 
holder ever put on a jury? If so, no white man 
would sit with him. Yet gentlemen who would 
shrink from 'such association now proposed to 
associate with him in the important duty of elect- 
ing a governor and assembly. If you admit the 
negro, why exclude women and Indians? They 
have never been enslaved ; they are born free as 
the air they breathe. We ought to make a consti- 
tution suited to our habits, customs and usages. 
Metaphysical refinements are of no use in framing 
a constitution. No white man will stand shoulder 
to shoulder with a negro in the train-band or the 
jury room, or invite him to his table or into his 
pew in church. Why then put him on an equality 
on election day? 

[ 72 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

These arguments were partially successful, and 
while the% a ballot was given to every white male 
citizen who had lived one year in the state and 
paid a tax or served in the militia, or having lived 
three years in the state had been assessed to labor 
on the highways, and had performed that labor 
or paid the equivalent in money, no negro could 
vote unless he had lived three years in the state, 
and owned a freehold worth two hundred and 
fifty dollars and had paid a tax thereon. In the 
opinion of Martin Van Buren who was a member 
of this convention, this extension of suffrage for 
whites was carried too far. It was practically 
universal suffrage. He was disposed to go as far 
as any man in the extension of rational liberty, 
but he could not consent to undervalue this 
precious privilege so far as to confer it indis- 
criminately on every one, black and white, who 
would be kind enough to condescend to accept it. 

In Massachusetts a like contest had just taken 
place. Even in that conservative state the spirit 
of the age was at work, and the old constitution 
of 1780, had become, by 1820, so antiquated that 
a convention was called to revise, amend and 
modernize it. The great question which the 
reformers had to answer was, will the rights of 
property be respected in a state where every man 
may cast a vote? Is it not a fundamental prin- 
ciple of our system of government, that if repre- 
sentation in one branch of the legislature is based 
on population, the other should be based on 

[ 73 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

property? How else can you maintain the checks 
and balances? If you have the right to disfran- 
chise the pauper, the man without one dollar, 
haven't you the same right to disfranchise the 
man not worth two hundred and fifty dollars? If 
suffrage is one of the natural rights of man, then 
you could not disfranchise a pauper. 

But the answer to these questions and the con- 
test which followed them is a subject too long to 
be taken up this afternoon. I will begin with it, 
therefore, with your permission, tomorrow. 



[ 74 ] 



LECTURE III 



LECTURE III. 

We left the subject at a point where the 
people of Massachusetts were about to make 
their second constitution. The ideas of the 
rights of man had been so generally accepted 
at that time that there was no question as to 
whether there should be a religious or prop- 
erty qualification for a voter or for minor office- 
holders, or for members of the lower house of the 
general court. But the contest for the rights of 
property as against the rights of man was waged 
over the question of qualifications for membership 
in the senate and for voting in the senate. The 
plan before the convention was that a property 
qualification should be required for the persons 
who wished to vote for a senator or wished to be 
eligible to the senate, the qualification being the 
same as in the old constitution, the ownership of 
two hundred dollars' worth of property. 

That matter had just been fought out in the 
constitutional convention in New York, and had 
resulted in a general franchise for all voters and 
office-holders except negroes, who were required 
to have a freehold of two hundred and fifty 
dollars. 

The argument made in the convention in Mas- 
sachusetts was to the effect, that if you can forbid 
a man who has no money — a pauper — to vote, 

I 77 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

you may at the same time, with the same right, 
disfranchise the man who has not two hundred 
and fifty dollars ; that if suffrage is one of the 
natural rights — an inalienable right of man — 
then you cannot exclude either paupers or persons 
under twenty-one years of age. But, in truth, 
there is no question of right, it is entirely a ques- 
tion of expediency. It is expedient to retain the 
qualification in the constitution. It is in the 
nature of a privilege and, as such, is connected 
with many virtues which conduce to the good 
order of society. It is a distinction to be sought 
for, and is the reward of good conduct. It 
encourages industry, economy and prudence; it 
elevates the standard of all our civil institutions ; 
and gives dignity and importance to those who 
choose and those who are chosen. It acts as a 
stimulus to exertion to acquire what it is a dis- 
tinction to possess. The speaker maintained that 
in this country, where the means of subsistence 
were so abundant, and the demand for labor so 
great, every man of sound body could acquire the 
necessary qualification. If he failed to do this it 
must be, ordinarily, because he was indolent or 
vicious. In many of the states a qualification of 
freehold was required. He thought that a wise 
provision, and if any alteration was to be made 
he should be in favor of placing it there rather 
than upon personal property. As it was, he 
thought it valuable as a moral means, as part of 
that moral force so essential to the support of any 

[ 78 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

free government. He considered it as unreason- 
able, that a man who had no property should act 
indirectfy upon the property of others. If gen- 
tlemen would look to the statute book, to the 
business of the legislature, or to the courts of law, 
how much of all that was done would be found to 
relate to the rights of property. It lay at the 
foundation of the social state, it was the spring 
of all action and all employment. It was there- 
fore, he apprehended, wholly inequitable in its 
nature that men without a dollar should in any 
way determine the rights of property or have any 
concern in its appropriation. He also contended 
that the principle of the resolution was anti- 
republican. It greatly increased the number of 
voters, and those of a character most liable to be 
improperly influenced or corrupted. It enlarged 
the field of action to every popular favorite, and 
enabled him to combine greater numbers. The 
time might come when he would be able to com- 
mand, as truly as ever a general commanded an 
army, sufficient numbers to affect or control the 
government itself. In that case the form of a 
republican constitution might remain but its life 
and spirit would have fled. The government 
would be essentially a democracy, and between 
that and a despotism there would be but one 
step. Such would be the tendency of the prin- 
ciple, and so far as it operated it would change 
the structure of the constitution. The qualifica- 
tion which it required was intended as a security 

[ 79 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

for property. He considered it as a barrier which 
ought not to be removed, and could not be without 
danger to the state. 

The assertion has been made, said another 
speaker, that no fundamental principle of the 
government was to be changed. This proposition 
did change a fundamental principle. It was not 
the admission or the rejection of a few votes in 
the existing state of things. But it was a change 
which might, at some time or other, produce a 
result widely different from what gentlemen 
apprehended. It went directly to sap the founda- 
tions of society. He asked if there were too 
many incentives to industry and economy at 
present? Apprentices and the sons of poor 
farmers were induced to lead a life of industry 
and economy, that when they arrived at the age 
provided by law they might be prepared to exer- 
cise the rights of freemen. This alone was suffi- 
cient to determine his vote. But there were 
other considerations It was an anti-republican 
principle. He proceeded to state in what manner 
a rich man in a populous town might command 
the votes of men without any property, and con- 
sequently destitute of character. It now very 
seldom happened that a man of industrious habits 
and regular life was excluded from the right of 
voting. Even men of character who through 
misfortune are obliged to call on towns for aid, 
often have property enough to entitle them to 
vote. The household furniture, exempted by law 

[ So ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

from attachment, is nearly enough to give them 
the right. Very few but vagabonds are excluded. 

Another member of the convention said he 
recollected that in 1775, the saying was current 
that taxation and representation should go hand 
in hand. Take this text and apply it to the men 
who are excluded by this qualification from the 
right of voting. Who are they? The laboring 
parts of society. How long have they been fet- 
tered? Forty years. Who achieved our indepen- 
dence? This class of men. And shall we then 
disfranchise them? I hope not. As the constitu- 
tion now is these men are deprived of voting and 
must stand by and see the rich putting in their 
votes. Though a man was a Newton or a Locke, 
if he is poor he may stand by and see his liberties 
voted away. Suppose an invasion should hap- 
pen — these men would be obliged to come 
forward in defense of their country. He felt 
conscientiously bound to give them the right of 
voting. 

Gentlemen, said yet another member, who were 
unwilling to change the principles of the consti- 
tution, instead of striking out this qualification 
ought to increase the sum on account of the 
change in the value of money. He thought, 
however, that it would be impossible for them to 
effect this change without a radical departure 
from the fundamental principles of good govern- 
ment. He would not contend against the right 
of requiring it, though there were strong argu- 

[ 81 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

ments on that side, but he considered it inexpedient 
to make the change. The provision could not be 
carried into effect; it was the cause of perjury 
and immorality ; it did not prevent a fraudulent 
man, who owed more than he was worth, from 
voting but debarred an honest man who paid his 
debts ; and it tended to throw suspicion of unfair- 
ness on the municipal authority. 

Of all the arguments made against universal 
suffrage the best known in our day is that made 
by Daniel Webster, for a few days after he made 
it before the convention he embodied it word for 
word in the famous Plymouth Oration. "If, " 
said Webster, ' ' the two houses are to be chosen 
in the manner proposed, there is obviously no 
other check or control than a division into separate 
chambers. The members of both houses are to 
be chosen at the same time, by the same electors, 
in the same districts, and for the same term of 
office. They will of course all be actuated by the 
same feelings and interests. Whatever motives 
may at the moment exist to elect particular mem- 
bers of one house, will operate equally on the 
choice of members for the other. There is so 
little of real utility in this mode that, if nothing 
more be done, it would be more expedient to 
choose all the members of the legislature without 
distinction, simply as members of the legislature, 
and to make the division into two houses, either 
by lot or otherwise, after these members, the 
chosen should have come up to the capital. 

[ 82 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

" I wish now, sir, to correct a most important 
mistake in the manner in which this question has 
been stated. It has been said that we propose 
to give property, merely as such, a control over 
the people numerically considered. But this I 
take to be not at all the true nature of the propo- 
sition. The senate is not to be a check on the 
people but on the House of Representatives. It is 
the case of an authority given to one agent to 
check or control the acts of another. The people 
having conferred on the House of Representatives 
powers which are great and from their nature 
liable to abuse, require for their own security 
another house which shall possess an effectual 
negative on the first. This does not limit the 
power of the people, but only the authority of 
their agents. It is not a restraint on their rights, 
but a restraint on the power that they have dele- 
gated. It limits the authority of agents in making 
laws to bind their principals. And if it be wise 
to give one agent the power of checking or 
controlling another it is equally wise, most mani- 
festly, that there should be some difference of 
character, sentiment, feeling or origin in that 
agent who is to possess this control. Otherwise 
it is not at all probable that the control will ever 
be exercised. To require the consent of two 
agents to the validity of an act, and yet to appoint 
agents so similar in all respects as to create a 
moral certainty that what one does the other will 
do, also would be inconsistent and nugatory. 

[ 83 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

There can be no effectual control without some 
difference. 

1 ' The true principle of a free and popular gov- 
ernment would seem to be so to construct it as to 
give all, or at least to a very great majority, an 
interest in its preservation ; to found it, as other 
things are founded, on men's interest. The 
stability of government requires that those who 
desire its continuance should be more powerful 
than those who desire its dissolution. This 
power, of course, is not always to be measured 
by mere numbers. Education, wealth, talents, 
are all parts and elements of the general aggre- 
gate of power. But numbers, nevertheless, 
constitute ordinarily the most important consid- 
eration, unless indeed there be a military force 
in the hands of the few by which they can control 
the many. 

" It would seem, then, to be the part of polit- 
ical wisdom to found government on property, 
and to establish such distribution of property by 
the laws which regulate its transmission and 
alienation, as to interest the great majority of 
society in the protection of the government. 
This is, I imagine, the true theory and actual 
practice of our republican institutions. With 
property divided as we have it, no other govern- 
ment than that of a republic could be maintained, 
even were we foolish enough to desire it. There 
is reason, therefore, to expect a long continuance 
£)f our systems. Party and passion, doubtless, 

[ 84 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

may prevail at times and much temporary mis- 
chief be done. Even modes and forms may be 
changed, and perhaps for the worse. But a great 
revolution in regard to property must take place 
before our governments can be moved from their 
republican basis, unless they be violently struck 
off by military power. The people possess the 
property more emphatically than it could ever be 
said of the people of any other country, and they 
can have no interest to overturn a government 
which protects that property by equal laws. 

" If the nature of our institutions be to found 
government on property, and that it should look 
to those who hold property for its protection, it 
is entirely just that property should have its due 
weight and consideration in political arrange- 
ments. Life and personal liberty are, no doubt, 
to be protected by law ; but property is also to be 
protected by law, and is the fund out of which 
the means for protecting life and liberty are 
usually furnished. We have no experience that 
teaches us that any other rights are safe where 
property is not safe. Confiscation and plunder 
are generally, in revolutionary commotions, not 
far before banishment, imprisonment, and death. 
It would be monstrous to give even the name of 
government to any association in which the rights 
of property should not be competently secured. 
The disastrous revolutions which the world has 
witnessed; those political thunderstorms and 
earthquakes which have overthrown the pillars of 

[ 85 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

society from their very deepest foundations, have 
been revolutions against property. ' ' 

This argument prevailed with the convention, 
and no change was made in the property qualifi- 
cation for the office of governor, lieutenant-gov- 
ernor or senator. But the test oath was abolished, 
and the ballot given to every male citizen of full 
age who had lived one year in the state, and 
within two years preceding any election had paid 
a tax. 

To this steady progress in the acquisition of the 
political rights of man the people of Rhode Island 
had hitherto remained indifferent, and still lived 
under the old charter granted by King Charles in 
1663. But even Rhode Island now became in- 
fected with a longing for manhood suffrage, and 
in 1824, her first constitution was framed by a 
convention and rejected at the polls by her limited 
class of voters. Next came Maryland, where in 
1826, after a contest covering more than twenty 
years, public offices were opened to the Jews. 
Since her constitution went into effect in 1776, 
every man appointed or elected to any office of 
profit or trust must, before he entered on his 
duties, subscribe a declaration of his belief in the 
Christian religion. Because of this restriction no 
Jew, nor any one else who did not believe in 
Christianity, could serve on a jury, or be a sheriff 
or an officer in the militia, or sit as a judge or 
magistrate, or practice law, or be a member of 
the assembly or the senate or hold even the hum- 

[ S6 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

blest office in the state. Again and again 
attempts were made to break down this restric- 
tion, only to end in failure. But the time had 
now come when the rights of man were not to be 
any longer denied to non-Christians, when polit- 
ical equality was no longer to be confined to men 
of any sect or creed, when the old doctrine " all 
men are created equal ' ' was to be applied to 
another great body of citizens. And in 1826, the 
"Jew Bill, " as it was called, was once more intro- 
duced into the legislature. 

1 ' We take our stand, ' ' said the defenders of the 
bill, " on the Declaration of Independence. We 
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 
are created equal. The Jews are men and there- 
fore created your equals. But do you treat them 
as such? No, for you say they are unworthy to 
sit by your side in the administration of a free 
government. They are endowed with certain 
inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty 
and the pursuit of happiness. But you have cur- 
tailed them in their liberty, you have hindered 
them in the pursuit of happiness, the best of all 
kinds of liberty — religious liberty, and the pur- 
suit of eternal happiness — the best of all sorts of 
happiness. For the preservation of these, govern- 
ments are instituted among men. But your 
government is instituted for their destruction. 
You put them under the ban of the republic. 
Says the Declaration of Independence, all govern- 
ments derive their just powers from the consent 

[ 87 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

of the governed. They never gave you their 
consent to deprive them of their civil and relig- 
ious privileges. The bill now on your table gives 
to the Jews no new rights ; it merely preserves to 
them rights which are immutably and inalienably 
theirs. If you continue to enforce this outlawry 
clause of your constitution, you rear up with the 
hand of arbitrary power, the worst of all meas- 
ures, a religious hierarchy. The principles even 
upon which you uphold the pure Christian religion 
to the exclusion of every other, are the principles 
which upheld the Inquisition in Spain and the 
Episcopal hierarchy of England. The right to 
put up one religion is the right to put down 
another ; the right to put down one is the right to 
put down all, and the right to put down all is the 
right to build up one on their ruins. A Jew may 
be president of the United States, yet he cannot 
be a constable in Maryland. A Jew may be 
judge of a United States district court, yet he 
cannot be an attorney of a county court of Mary- 
land. A Jew may be a marshal of the United 
States, yet he cannot be a sheriff or clerk of a 
court in Maryland. Is this right? Was anything 
ever more cruel? Is this not a religious persecu- 
tion? True, it is not the fagot or the rack, but is 
applied for the very same reason — because the 
religions of some men do not conform to that of 
the majority. An odious exclusion of one man 
from any of the benefits common to the rest of 
his fellow citizens, is a persecution differing only 

[ 88 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

in degree but of a nature equally unjust with 
that whose instruments are chains and torture. 
In a land of equal rights, to be subjected to a 
degrading exception is a punishment of real 
severity. 

" But, it is said, let this bill pass and we shall 
have Chinese, Turks and infidels in office. Is 
anybody really afraid that Chinese and Turks 
will be elected to office in Maryland? Is there 
any reason why they should not be, if the people 
think them worthy? I never saw but two Chinese 
in the United States, and they were servants of 
a New York merchant. I never saw but one 
Turk, and he was exhibited as a juggler. But 
the infidel ! No religious test can have any effect 
on them. Will they hesitate to subscribe to the 
test if anything is to be gained by it? But this 
bill is not intended for Chinese, Turks or infidels. 
It is expressly intended for the Jews. And is 
not their religion of divine origin? Was not 
Christ a Jew? Do not we believe in the Old Tes- 
tament? " 

These arguments prevailed. The Jew Bill 
passed the legislature in 1825, the confirmatory 
act, as required by the constitution, passed in 
1826, and the rights of man were yet further 
extended. 

That an extreme should sooner or later be 
reached, that a part of the community, carried 
away by an eagerness to reform whatever in their 
opinion infringed the rights or restrained the 

[ 89 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

liberties of man, should leave good sense behind 
and attempt the impossible, was inevitable. In- 
dividualism, the rights of the individual, now 
became a fad, and when in 1825, the great apostle 
of communism, Robert Owen, landed on our 
shores and began to preach the absolute equality 
of all men and all women, equality of rights, 
equality of labor, common ownership of property, 
and cooperation to the fullest extent, he found an 
all too ready audience and enthusiastic followers. 
That one man should have one hundred acres and 
another not a foot of land ; that one man should 
have ten thousand dollars and another be in debt, 
was grossly unjust and bred that inequality which 
made the one man an aristocrat and the other a 
slave. Therefore all property should be held in 
common. That one man should be paid ten 
dollars a day for his services and another fifty 
cents was grossly unjust. Every form of labor, 
from the highest to the lowest, the skilled and 
the unskilled, was equally meritorious, honorable 
and deserving. Therefore the physician who 
could amputate a limb or by his skill save the 
life of a patient, was entitled to no more compen- 
sation than the man whose lot it was to dig ditches 
or carry a hod. The true community was that in 
which men and women dwelt in one great build- 
ing, ate the same sort of food, shared the same 
amusements and wore the same sort of clothing, 
cut in the same fashion. When explaining his 
views to the audiences that gathered to hear Mr. 

[ 90 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

Owen as he went from city to city, it was his 
custom to begin by attempting to show that the 
construction of modern society was all wrong; 
that the prevalence of error, prejudice, vice and 
crime was due to the practice of bringing up the 
young in a system of society which he called the 
individual or selfish ; and that there were two sets 
of circumstances which entirely regulated the 
formation of a man's character. The one was his 
religious belief, and the other was his education. 
Every child was possessed of a body and a mind 
over which he had no control ; whether that mind 
was moulded for good or for ill depended on the 
circumstances with which the parents surrounded 
the child. " Had you," he would say, " on my 
right hand, been brought up under the influence 
of such circumstances as are to be found at the 
foot of the Rocky Mountains, you would all have 
been Indians, save as to the color of your skins. 
Had you, on my left hand, been exposed from 
infancy to the circumstances which prevail in 
China, you would have been Chinese, except in 
form and figure." Any social system, then, 
which ignored the power of circumstances was 
wrong. That system which was based on ' ' the 
science of circumstances ' ' was right. As to relig- 
ion, it should be a rational one, founded on 
matter-of-fact and the evidences of the senses — 
in short, the revealed word of God. Any events 
recorded in books professing to be of divine origin 
which were in opposition to this principle were 

[ 91 1 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

false. The Scriptures were not divine nor writ- 
ten by men under divine influence, nor did they 
more than any other writings contain the revealed 
word or will of God. All religions, the Christian 
included, were founded in error, and, so far from 
being fitted to promote happiness and virtue 
among mankind they had the opposite tendency. 
If the human race, then, was to be made virtuous 
and happy, the old system must be done away 
with, for its intuitions and its prejudices could 
not exist together with the principles of the new. 
It was for this reason, therefore, that he urged 
the formation of communities in which should be 
associated persons in sympathy with his views. 
The number in any community should never be 
less than five hundred nor more than two thou- 
sand, and they should begin by purchasing a 
tract of twenty thousand acres of good land. In 
the center should be four buildings, each a thou- 
sand feet long, so placed as to form the four sides 
of a hollow square. From the middle of each side 
a building should project into the square and in it 
should be the dining-hall, the kitchen, the laun- 
dry, the store-rooms — in short, all the domestic 
appliances needed for the comfort and conveni- 
ence of those living in the dormitory to which it 
was attached. The school-rooms, lecture-rooms, 
laboratories, the chapels, concert -halls and ball- 
rooms should be in the centers and corners of the 
buildings. On the first and second stories should 
be dormitories, and on the third floor the quarters 

[ 92 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

of unmarried persons and children over two years 
of age, for at that L time of life they were to be 
taken from their parents lest they should acquire 
the foolish ideas and habits of the old society. 
Around the village thus arranged should lie the 
farms. Every member should have equal rights 
and privileges according to age, and be fully 
supplied with the comforts and necessaries of life. 
Nobody should own any land, or houses, or cattle, 
for all property was to be held in common. There 
should be no churches, no sects or creeds, no 
religious worship, but moral lectures and such a 
system of public education as would foster in the 
young a love of justice, morality, and truth. For 
the very young there should be dancing, singing 
and military drill. For the older in years, such 
studies as music and history, drawing and astron- 
omy, geography, botany and agriculture. The 
school -room should be, not a barn but a picture 
gallery and museum. Learning should cease to 
be a task and become a source of wonder and 
delight. 

That the people might have a practical illustra- 
tion of the soundness of his views, Mr. Owen 
bought from the Rappites their community town 
of Harmony, in Indiana, and there before a mot- 
ley gathering of men and women who had come 
to share in his enterprise, he unfolded his plan for 
the regeneration of society through cooperation. 
He told them that it was idle to expect that men 
trained as they had been should be able to pass 

[ 93 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

at one bound from an irrational to a rational 
system of society. A half-way house, a period 
of probation was necessary to fit them for the 
practice of cooperation ; that he had determined, 
therefore, to form them into the Preliminary 
Society of New Harmony, give them a constitu- 
tion which should continue for three years, and 
leave the management of affairs in the hands of a 
preliminary committee. But the committee 
sadly mis-managed affairs, and when a year had 
come and gone, Owen abolished the Preliminary 
Society, organized another which he called the 
New Harmony Community of Equality, and gave 
it a constitution which for those days was socialis- 
tic in the extreme. There was to be the utmost 
freedom of speech, absolute equality of rights and 
equality of duties, common ownership of property, 
a common treasury, and cooperation to the furthest 
extent. So far his followers were quite ready to 
go. But the next reform to be introduced bred 
trouble. First came a decree prescribing uni- 
formity of dress. For men, the outer garments 
were to be a collarless jacket, drawn on over the 
head, pantaloons buttoned to the jacket, and a 
belt around the waist. The women were to wear 
pantalettes and a sleeveless frock that came down 
to the knees. Against this many of them openly 
rebelled, refused to wear the costume, and would 
have nothing to do with those who did. Still the 
great projector did not lose heart. Such things 
were but the fruit of the irrational system in 

[ 94 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

which the human race had been trained since the 
first man set foot on the earth. They were pain- 
ful and % hard to endure, yet they must be borne 
with the patience of a reformer ; and on the 4th 
of July, 1826, Owen went one step further and 
made a Declaration of Mental Independence which 
shocked and horrified far more people than it ever 
converted. Man, he said, up to that hour, all 
the world over had been a slave to a trinity of 
the most monstrous evils that could possibly be 
combined to inflict mental and physical evils on 
the whole race. One was private or individual 
ownership of property, another was absurd and 
irrational systems of religion, the third was the 
marriage tie which, he declared, ought to be made 
without any ceremony and terminated at the 
pleasure of those concerned. This was too much. 
His theories about property and cooperation, the 
arrangements of buildings, and the education of 
children were matters of opinion. In a land of 
toleration he might hold any religious belief or 
none. But the moment he touched the marriage 
rite he touched public morality, and his views 
were denounced from one end of the country to 
the other. 

Hitherto the community had been singularly 
prosperous. Emigrants had come in so fast that 
to provide them with lodgings had been found 
impossible, and those contemplating settlement 
had been warned to wait. But now all was 
changed. Discord took the place of harmony, and 

C 95 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

before six months elapsed Owen was selling prop- 
erty to individuals, sign-boards were appearing, 
shops were opening, fences were going up, and 
New Harmony was taking on all the characteris- 
tics of a village of the unregenerated sort. Before 
a year had passed Owen, discouraged by the 
wreck he saw about him, bade his followers fare- 
well and left them to their fate. But not before 
other communities of a like kind sprang up on 
the frontier. Some enthusiasts at Cincinnati, 
carried away by the eloquence of Owen, bought 
land and founded the Yellow Springs Community 
in Ohio. Others were started at Blue Springs, 
Indiana ; at Kendal, near Canton, Ohio ; at Pitts- 
burg; at Coxsackie, New York; at Haverstraw, 
New York ; at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Many 
of his followers went back to their old homes. 
Some were driven away as worthless. Others 
remained and formed little communities on the 
New Harmony lands. Two, his son Robert Dale 
Owen and his devoted admirer, Miss Fanny 
Wright, removed to New York to take part in the 
struggle for the rights of labor then under way 
in the East. 

In the course of the two and twenty years which 
had elapsed since Congress laid the Long Em- 
bargo, our country had passed through a great 
industrial revolution. Manufactures had grown 
up, the tariffs of 1816, 1824, and 1828, had been 
enacted, protection to home industries had become 
the settled policy of the government, and the 

[ 96 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

Eastern, Middle and some of the Western states 
were dotted with mills, factories, machine shops, 
and manufacturing establishments of a hundred 
sorts. Great works of internal improvement 
were under way. Canals were being built, turn- 
pikes constructed and railroad in course of build- 
ing in a dozen states, and the great cities were 
being rebuilt. Hundreds of thousands of young 
men and women had been drawn from the farms 
to the mills and factories. A great body of ma- 
chinists, skilled artisans, had come into existence, 
and tens of thousands of men from the old world 
had come over to fill the demand for unskilled 
labor. That these men should be content to live 
under the old conditions of labor was not to be 
expected. The long hours of labor, the liability to 
imprisonment for debt, which still lingered in 
many states, the need of a lien law, the impossibil- 
ity of educating their children in a land where 
education counted for so much, were to them 
grievances of a serious kind. The first quarter of 
the nineteenth century, therefore, had scarcely 
passed when a great movement began in the manu- 
facturing states for the rights of labor. Social 
unions of various crafts were formed in all the 
seaboard cities north of Baltimore, and began to 
agitate for labor reforms. In 1828, an attempt 
was made in the New York Legislature to secure a 
mechanics' lien law, and a report strongly favor- 
ing such a measure of relief was presented. In 
Philadelphia the workingmen, breaking old ties, 

[ 97 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

entered politics on their own behalf and formed 
a labor party. At a public meeting in August 
it was formally resolved to urge the workingmen 
to support no candidate for a seat in the legislature 
or in the city councils who would not pledge him- 
self to further the interests and demands of " the 
working classes," and a call was issued for 
organization. The city and county were marked 
off into four districts, from each of which dele- 
gates were sent to a general convention which 
nominated assemblymen, common councilmen, 
and auditor. 

The tickets were defeated, but the organization 
continued, and ere another year went by made 
two demands for reform : one that the managers 
of the House of Refuge who had just introduced 
mechanical occupations into their institution, 
should see to it that the mechanics and working- 
men of Philadelphia suffered no injury, and 
another that the State of Pennsylvania should 
establish a system of free republican schools, 
open to children of the rich and of the poor with- 
out distinction. 

Judged by the standard of public instruction 
as now maintained in Pennsylvania, the demand 
of the workingmen was reasonable and just. The 
constitution of the commonwealth, framed a gen- 
eration before, required that the children of the 
poor should be educated at the public cost. The 
injunction was mandatory; the meaning was 
plain. Yet no steps were taken to carry it out 
[ 98 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

till 1809, when a law was enacted requiring the 
assessors of taxes to make a census of the children 
whose parents were too poor to educate them, 
send the boys and girls to the nearest school, and 
assess the cost on the taxpayers. Even this wise 
provision was neglected. Some districts had no 
schools of any kind; in others the funds were 
embezzled, misapplied, perverted, or the law but 
partly executed, for the people refused to accept 
the benefit conferred lest their children should be 
looked on and treated as paupers. Meanwhile 
the cities increased in population, and the number 
of children growing up in absolute ignorance 
became so large that in 18 18 a second step forward 
was taken and the city and county of Philadelphia, 
the city and borough of Lancaster, and the city 
of Pittsburg were formed into three districts, with 
free schools in which children whose parents were 
too poor to educate them were taught reading, 
writing, arithmetic and geography. No child 
whose parents could pay his schooling was 
admitted, and this in the eyes of the workingmen 
was an offensive class distinction. It separated 
the children of the rich from those of the poor 
and said to the latter, ' ' You are paupers. ' ' That 
some men should be rich and others poor was 
inevitable, but to build up class hatred was not 
necessary, and no surer way of preventing it 
could be devised than a system of equal republican 
education with free schools open to the children 
of all citizens alike. 

LofC. C " ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

The efforts which workingmen were thus mak- 
ing to secure great social reforms, and especially 
their demands for free public schools, now warmly- 
enlisted in their cause another body of reformers 
known as the Free Enquirers, who were regarded 
at that day by conservative people with the same 
horror and detestation that anarchists and social- 
ists are regarded in ours. 

The center of this movement was New York 
City, and there, in October 1829, the workingmen 
were summoned to meet and organize for the 
defence of their rights, and as the fall elections 
were about to take place, to put into the field can- 
didates of their own party. Hundreds responded, 
a great meeting was held, and before adjourning 
a committee of fifty was appointed to report a 
plan of organization and write an address. At 
another meeting held a month later, an assembly 
ticket was chosen and a set of resolutions which 
did duty as a labor-party platform were adopted. 
They read as follows : 

" 1. In the opinion of this meeting, the first 
appropriation of the soil of the state to private 
and exclusive possession was eminently unjust. 

"2. That it was substantially feudal in its 
character, inasmuch as those who received 
enormous and unequal possessions were lords, and 
those who received little or nothing were vassals. 

11 3. That hereditary transmission of wealth 
on the one hand and of poverty on the other has 
brought down to the present generation all the 

[ 100 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

evils of the feudal system ; and all this, in our 
opinion is the prime source of all our calamities. 

"4. >In this view of the matter, that the great- 
est impostors, knaves and paupers of the age are 
our bankers, who swear they have promised to 
pay to their debtors thirty or thirty-five million 
dollars on demand, at the same time that they 
have, as they also swear, only three or four mil- 
lions to do it with. 

" 5. That more than one hundred broken 
banks within a few years past admonish the com- 
munity to destroy banks altogether. 

" 6. That more than a thousand kinds of 
counterfeit notes from five hundred to a single 
dollar give double force to the admonition. 

"7. That exemption is privilege, and as such 
the exemption from taxation of churches and 
church property and the property of priests to an 
amount not exceeding fifteen hundred dollars, is 
a direct and positive robbery of the people. ' ' 

The seriousness of this movement and the 
eagerness with which laborers, mechanics, clerks, 
men who belonged to every class of the great body 
of toilers, hastened to give it encouragement and 
support, now brought into existence a new jour- 
nal, and in October 1829, the first number of 
The Workingman's Advocate made its appearance. 
"We think," said the prospectus of the Advo- 
cate, " we see in the existing state of society 
around us something radically wrong. We see 
one portion living in luxury and idleness. We 

[ 101 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

see another engaged in employments which are 
useless or worse than useless. We see a third 
part — and it is the most numerous — groaning 
under the oppression and miseries inflicted on it 
by the other two, and we see all suffering from 
the effects of vice produced by luxury and indo- 
lence, and of ignorance caused by poverty. We 
are therefore opposed to monopolies, exemptions, 
exclusive privileges. We consider it an exclusive 
privilege for one part of the community to have 
the means of education in college while another 
is restricted to the common schools, or forced by 
dire poverty to have no education at all. We are 
therefore in favor of a system of education equally 
open to all men. ' ' On the same principle the 
Advocate was opposed to banks in general and to 
the Bank of the United States in particular, was 
against imprisonment for debt, against the owner- 
ship of land in large quantities by private indi- 
viduals, and in favor of a lien law, and heartily 
supported the ticket the committee of fifty had 
placed before the voters. 

It was then the custom in New York to open 
the polls on three consecutive days. At the close 
of the first day it seemed so likely that the Work- 
ingmen's Ticket would triumph that the journals 
which upheld the Republican cause called loudly 
on the friends of good order to rally. " The 
general impression prevails, ' ' said one newspaper, 
4 ' that the ticket for assembly got up by the 
disciples of Fanny Wright, and wrongfully called 

[ 102 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

the Mechanics' Ticket, has received a large pro- 
portion of the votes given yesterday. Some have 
declared that it is far ahead of every other. Be 
this as N it may, it becomes the friends of good 
order in this community, of whatever party, to 
go to the polls and by their votes prevent so 
shameful a result. Shameful it would be if even 
a moderate support were given to tickets prepared 
by persons who scoff at morality and demand a 
system of public robbery. " ' ' We understand, ' ' 
said another, " with astonishment and alarm that 
the ' Infidel Ticket, ' miscalled ' the Workingmen's 
Ticket,' is far ahead of every other assembly 
ticket in the city. What a state of things have 
we reached ! A ticket got up openly and avowedly 
in opposition to all banks, in opposition to social 
order, in opposition to the rights of property, 
running ahead of every other! Is not this suffi- 
cient to startle men who have regard for the 
fundamental laws of society?" On the second 
and third days the friends of religion and order 
thus appealed to did rally, and but one candidate 
on the Mechanics' Ticket, Ebenezer Ford, was 
elected. 

The great vote cast for Ford — 6, 166 — alarmed 
the community. All the horrors of anarchy 
seemed at hand. The " Fanny Wright Ticket," 
the * ' Infidel Ticket ' ' was denounced and the 
legislature called on to unseat Mr. Ford. The 
leaders of this miscalled mechanics' party, the 
people were told, held that everything was wrong 

[ 103 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

in the present state of society, and that the whole 
system must be changed. Their object was 
represented to be to turn the state into an Owenite 
community, confiscate all land and hold it for the 
general use of the people, strike down religion, 
and abolish marriage. 

So horrid a picture of socialism disturbed the 
mechanics, who now made haste to publicly disa- 
vow all connection with Owen, with Fanny 
Wright and the Free Enquirers, and at a ward 
meeting passed resolutions denying all sympathy 
with the ' ' Infidel party, ' ' repelling with scorn 
the charge that they were hostile to the civil, 
moral and religious institutions of the country, 
and declaring agrarian laws to be debasing, 
wicked and dishonest. The New York Typo- 
graphical Society went further yet and appointed 
a committee to report as to who Owen was and 
in what his scheme consisted. The committee 
assured the typesetters that Robert Dale Owen 
was a Scotchman, that he probably had never 
been naturalized, and that he had been assisted 
in his labors ' ' by one Fanny Wright, also an 
exotic of some notoriety." 

"It does seem unaccountably strange," said 
the report, ' ' that a native of that part of the 
world where thousands are every day groaning 
under oppression, should leave these unfortunates, 
come over to the New World, and, in the midst 
of a people enjoying the fullest liberty proclaim 
himself the apostle of equal rights and tender 

[ 104 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

them the hand of friendship against their oppres- 
sors. Such insolence might well be treated with 
contemjpt were it not for the fact that a band of 
choice spirits of foreign origin, have united and, 
taking advantage of our mild laws, are sowing 
the seeds of discontent and rebellion. It is true 
that there is some distress among laboring people. 
It is true that labor is not as well paid as in times 
past, that a man working with his hands is now 
unable to earn as much as he once could. But 
in our country, at least, the distress is caused not 
by anything Owen could reform, but by the intro- 
duction of labor-saving machinery during the last 
thirty years. Has Owen any remedy to propose? 
Far from it. He calls on the workingmen to 
associate for defence of their rights when no 
rights are endangered. ' ' The report ended with 
a repudiation of his plan and a denial of all sym- 
pathy with his purposes. The Painters' Society, 
on the other hand, took a different view, admitted 
that much Mr. Owen said was true, and was dis- 
posed to favor his plan for free education. At 
Philadelphia, where the workingmen supported a 
ticket at the October election for city and county 
officers, they too denied the charge of sympathy 
with Miss Wright as warmly as their fellow- 
laborers in New York. "We view," so ran a 
resolution adopted at a public meeting after the 
election, ' ' the report charging us with being 
disciples of Miss Wright, and connecting religious 
points with our contention, as a base fabrication 

[ 105 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

propagated by our enemies. We disclaim all 
adherence to Miss Wright's principles and hold 
them foreign to our views, and appeal to the fact 
of the existence of the Workingmen's party on 
the principles it now professes for nearly a year 
before she appeared among us. ' ' 

But it mattered little whether the workingmen 
avowed or disavowed sympathy with the Free 
Enquirers; the fact remained that a serious 
reform movement was well under way and was 
spreading and gaining in importance daily. All 
over the country journals were appearing to advo- 
cate it, and societies were forming to labor in its 
behalf. In New York City the Telescope was 
busy exposing the designs of the clergy and hold- 
ing up to view the dangers of ecclesiastical 
encroachment. At Rochester the Spirit of the 
Age was denouncing imprisonment for debt and 
capital punishment, and calling loudly for a 
mechanics' lien law. At Canton, in Ohio, the 
Farmers' and Mechanics' Society of Stark County 
had been founded to spread the new doctrines 
and agitate for cooperation and reform. At St. 
Louis there was a Society of Free Enquirers. In 
Alabama " The Ladies' Bill," to give women the 
right to hold after marriage property which 
belonged to them before, was warmly debated in 
the legislature, and in Tuscaloosa another Spirit 
of the Age upheld the cause of the people as 
vigorously as its Rochester contemporary. The 
Southern Free Press of Charleston, South Carolina, 

[ 106 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

announced its principles to be " No sect, no creed; 
open to all, ' ' and declared that it would collect 
such information as was useful to mechanics and 
workingmen and would look to them for support. 
V Our great object," said the editor in his pros- 
pectus, " will be to urge you to break down the 
barrier which separates your children from those 
of lordly aristocrats by the establishment of 
national schools. ' ' At New Castle, in Delaware, 
an Association of Working People was formed 
with a membership open to any person twenty- 
one years of age who was engaged in any branch 
of productive labor. " How is it," said the pre- 
amble to their constitution, " that all classes save 
the laboring are heard in the legislature? The 
commercial, the agricultural, the manufacturing, 
ask for protection and it is granted. But what is 
accorded the workingman — nothing. Yet who 
needs protection more? The price of labor is 
hourly going down because of the numbers thrown 
out of employment by labor-saving machinery. 
The cost of every article of consumption, mean- 
time, is increased by taxation. ' Does not the 
present system, under such circumstances, tend 
to increase the poverty of the poor and add to the 
riches of the rich? ' Let us then be represented 
in the legislature. Let us unite at the polls and 
give our votes to no candidate who is not pledged 
to support a rational system of education to be 
paid for out of the public funds, and to further a 
rightful protection for the laborer." At Wil- 

[ 107 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

mington, Delaware, was another Free Press like- 
wise pledged "to be open to all for the free, 
chaste and temperate discussion of subjects con- 
nected with the welfare of the human family. ' ' 
Its mission was "to arouse the attention of 
workingmen to the importance of cooperation in 
order to attain the rank and station in society to 
which they are justly entitled by virtue of indus- 
try, but from which they are excluded by want 
of a system of equal republican education. ' ' In 
New York City two new journals of a strongly 
agrarian sort began their career early in 1830. 
The one. The Friend of Equal Rights, demanded 
the equal division of property among the adults 
of a family at the age of maturity. The other, 
the Daily Sentinel, was devoted lt to the interests 
of mechanics and other workingmen, ' ' and at 
once became a political power. Indeed, it was 
started for the sole purpose of becoming such a 
power. 

The late election in the city made it clear that 
the workingmen had, in the language of our time, 
bolted their party, had supported a ticket which 
was not put forward by any political faction, and 
had done so because they were discontented and 
because they did not believe that their grievances 
would ever be removed by the men then in 
power. Six thousand votes cast solidly for or 
against any of the three parties then struggling 
for control in the city and state was too serious a 
matter to be treated lightly, and each of the three 

[ 108 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

began to strive eagerly for the support of the 
workingman. 

From the city the movement spread to the state, 
where it was taken up by the leaders of every one 
of the innumerable knots of anti-regency, anti- 
Van Buren, Anti-masonic and Clay Republicans. 
At the charter election in Albany, in the spring 
of 1830, the workingmen united on a ticket and 
carried four wards out of five. In Troy the same 
course was pursued, and * ' not one regency man, ' ' 
it was boastfully said, was elected. 

A little later the Friends of Liberal and Moral 
Principles met at Rochester. They were, their 
original resolution set forth, opposed to kingcraft, 
priestcraft, monopolies, interference of mission- 
aries, sectarian tracts, Sunday mails, union of 
church and state, and imprisonment for debt. 
To prove their sincerity on this latter point the 
deputy jailer was asked to release all persons con- 
fined in the county prison for debt and send the 
bill to the convention, which was accordingly done. 

In 1832, a convention of workingmen assembled 
in the State House, attended by delegates from 
New York and all the New England States save 
Vermont. The issues discussed were the ten- 
hour day, the effect of banks and other monopolies 
on the condition of the laboring classes, the im- 
provement of the system of education, legislation 
for the improvement of factories, abolition of 
imprisonment for debt, extension of the right of 
suffrage, taxation, and a lien law. 

[ 109 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

Associations of workmen of every sort, demands 
for a ten-hour day and better wages, and strikes 
when they were refused, now became a feature of 
the times. Again and again the strikers were 
prosecuted for conspiracy. Sometimes the courts 
held for the workmen, more often they were 
found guilty and fined under the common law of 
England. 

To the conservative part of the community 
these demands seemed revolutionary. Yet each 
one of them was long since granted as a right. 
State after state enacted a lien law. The com- 
mon school as we know it, a school maintained by 
the city or the state and open alike to the children 
of the rich and the poor, was soon to be found in 
almost every state. And when, in 1840, Van 
Buren by proclamation put the ten-hour day in 
force over all public works, the struggle for 
shorter hours was practically over. 

The old struggle against monopolies, however, 
went on and in New York bred a party which 
took the name of Equal Righters. The faces of 
these men were set against every custom, usage, 
institution, law which gave to any corporation, 
association, company or individual any privilege, 
exemption or right not enjoyed by the humblest 
man in the state. A bank could issue non-inter- 
est-bearing notes that passed as currency and 
were taken by the state arid the people in payment 
of taxes and the discharge of debts. No private 
man could enjoy such a privilege; therefore a 

[ "o ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

bank was an oppressive monopoly, curtailing the 
rights and liberties of man. A railroad, a canal 
company having the right of eminent domain 
could take the land of the farmer against his will, 
and force him to accept such compensation as 
others thought proper. No individual could do 
this ; therefore canal and railroad companies were 
monopolies and infringed the rights of man to 
acquire and hold property. The exemption of 
church property from taxation, the concentration 
of capital in industrial corporations, the holding 
of immense estates, the accumulations of great 
fortunes were all unjust discriminations against 
the individual, hostile to equal rights, and ought 
to be abolished or prevented. 

These, it is true, were the opinions of extrem- 
ists. But beneath them all are clearly discernible 
the inalienable rights for which our fathers 
fought — the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness. Their work was but one of the 
many phases of the ceaseless struggle for the 
rights of man. 

How serious this struggle might become, to 
what lengths the people mieht go to secure their 
rights is well illustrated in the Dorr War in 
Rhode Island in the early forties. 

When the colonies began to take up civil gov- 
ernment and framed their first written constitu- 
tions, the people of Rhode Island were living 
under the charter granted by King Charles in 
1663, which was not in any way modified when 

[ in ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

that colony, having declared itself free and inde- 
pendent, ratified the Declaration of Independence 
July 19, 1776. The machinery of government 
consisted of a governor chosen by the people at 
large, ten assistants also elected by the freemen 
at large, and seventy deputies or representatives, 
two each from twenty-six towns, four from Provi- 
dence, Portsmouth and Warwick, and six from 
Newport. The charter did not specify what 
should be the suffrage qualification. The General 
Assembly did this by repeated acts, and from 
1798 to 1842, the qualifications were a freehold of 
lands or tenements worth one hundred and thirty- 
four dollars, or yielding an annual rental of seven 
dollars, or the eldest son of a freeholder. Until 
1776, the assistants and deputies sat as one body. 
After that year they sat as separate bodies in 
different characters, and the assistants were re- 
named senators. From time to time, as in 1777, 
1797, 1811 and 18 1 7, half-hearted efforts were 
made to secure a constitution and extend the suff- 
rage, but the people took no interest in the issue 
and they failed. The agitations of 1820, 1821, 1822 
and 1823, were purely the work of the newspapers. 
No popular demand whatever was made, and the 
constitution of 1824, when framed was rejected by 
the voters. But the tariffs of 1824 and 1828, pro- 
duced a marked change in Rhode Island. Mills 
and factories increased with astonishing rapidity. 
Certain towns and cities became centers of manu- 
factures, and drew into them thousands of opera- 

[ I" ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

tives, who, having no freeholds, could neither be 
eligible to office nor cast a vote. The discontent 
of these people found expression in 1829 in 
petitions to the Assembly from Warren, Bristol 
and Providence, and brought from a committee 
of the legislature a most singular report. 

" The right of suffrage," said the report, " as 
it is the origin and basis of every free elective 
government, so it is the peculiar and exclusive 
prerogative of the people, and cannot without 
infringing that prerogative be subjected to any 
other control than that of the people themselves. 
Our ancestors thought fit to preserve the liberties 
of themselves and their posterity by limiting the 
franchise to the sound part of the community, 
the substantial freeholders of the state. Had 
they not a right to adopt these provisions? And 
have not their descendants and those whom they 
have associated with them in conformity to those 
provisions equally a right to preserve and adhere 
to them? Complain ers mistake their right, which 
is a right to qualify themselves as the law directs, 
not a right to be voters without such qualifi- 
cation. ' ' 

The report then goes on to defend the freehold 
qualification and denounce democracy as the curse 
of every nation which has ever yielded to its 
charms. 

The blow thus delivered by the legislative com- 
mittee ended for the time being all agitation for 
a liberal suffrage, and five years passed before 

[ "3 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

the issue was raised once more. This time the 
question was taken up by two towns in the north 
end of Providence county, which invited all 
towns in the state to send delegates to a conven- 
tion to be held at Providence. Ten responded 
and by the convention thus assembled a committee 
was appointed to write an Address to the People 
of Rhode Island. 

The writer of the report was Thomas W. Dorr, 
who took the ground that when the colonies 
severed the political ties which bound them to 
Great Britain, all obligation to obey a British 
charter or a constitution of government was of 
course dissolved ; that the sovereignty of the king 
then passed, not to the governor and company of 
Rhode Island but to the people at large, and that 
the people thus acquired the undoubted right to 
establish a constitution of their own making. As 
no such government was then established, the 
people are urged by Mr. Dorr to choose represen- 
tatives to a convention to frame a liberal and 
permanent constitution. 

Once more the legislature, now somewhat 
alarmed, issued a call for a convention which met 
in September 1834, adjourned till November, and 
then again till February 1835, at which time its 
members failed to appear. And so the matter 
rested till the great Whig campaign of 1840 shook 
the country and made even Rhode Island a Whig 
state and gave her a Whig senator in Congress. 
In the midst of the famous Log Cabin and Hard 

[ iu ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

Cider campaign there was suddenly scattered 
broadcast over the state a pamphlet purporting 
to come from The First Social Reform Society of 
New York, but undoubtedly written in Rhode 
Island. It was called "An Address to the 
Citizens of Rhode Island who are Denied the 
Right of Suffrage," and urged them to hold 
primary meetings in each town, call a convention, 
name the time and place of meeting, elect dele- 
gates, and append to the credentials of each 
member a list of the voters. The convention 
was then to canvass the votes, and if the whole 
number cast was found to exceed that cast at the 
last general election for Representatives to Con- 
gress, then the convention was to consider itself 
a representative of the majority of the people and 
fully authorized to frame a constitution. Under 
this constitution members of Congress were to be 
elected and go to Washington to claim their seats. 
The burden would then be thrust upon Congress, 
to decide whether the charter of 1663, or the con- 
stitution formed by the people of Rhode Island 
was a true republican form of government. 

Acting under these suggestions, a Rhode Island 
Suffrage Association was formed at Providence 
in the autumn of 1840, an example which was so 
promptly followed that by the spring of 1841, 
there was a suffrage society in nearly every town 
in the state. The Declaration of Principles issued 
by the Suffrage Association of Societies set forth : 

1. That all men are created free and equal. 

[ "5 ] 






The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

2. That property should not give political 
advantages to its possessors. 

3. That every body politic should have for its 
basis a bill of rights and a written constitution. 

4. That Rhode Island has neither. 

5. That the charter was void when Rhode 
Island became independent. 

6. That every state is entitled to a republican 
form of government. 

7. That the majority should govern. 

8. That the time for submission to unjust 
outrages on social and political rights had gone by. 

So far neither the Whigs nor the Democratic 
party gave any countenance to the movement. 
But the Whig triumph angered the Democrats, 
whose leading newspaper took occasion to remark 
that there were fourteen thousand men in Rhode 
Island who were not allowed to vote for president, 
that the election might have been different had 
these men voted, and that its columns were open 
to a discussion of a freer suffrage. But the 
suffragists declined the offer, started a new paper 
of their own, and at once began a campaign of 
education. Public meetings were held for debates 
on the many questions growing out of the issue. 
A great street parade with banners, badges and 
mottoes was held in Providence, and in May of 
1 84 1, a convention of suffragists gathered at New- 
port, and when it adjourned ordered the next 
meeting to be held at Providence on July 5, 1841, 
at which time and place a call was issued for a 

[ "6 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

people's convention to frame a constitution, and 
a pledge given that if such constitution so made 
should be adopted by a majority of the people it 
should be sustained and carried into effect by any 
means necessary. But the legislature in the 
meantime had acted on sundry petitions from 
freeholders and had called a convention, the dele- 
gates to which were to be chosen by the free- 
holders. There were then two such bodies, one 
the creature of the legislature, known as the 
Freeholders' Convention, the other the creature 
of the people, known as the People's Convention. 
Here was a deliberate exercise of the right asserted 
in the Declaration of Independence that govern- 
ments are instituted among men to secure the 
rights of man, and that when they fail to accom- 
plish the purpose for which they are instituted it 
is the right of the people to alter or abolish them. 
With the details of the work of these conven- 
tions we are not concerned. It is enough to 
know that from the People's Convention came a 
constitution providing for almost universal suf- 
frage, and from the Freemen's Convention a 
constitution was submitted by which suffrage was 
limited to possessors of one hundred and thirty- 
four dollars' worth of land or five hundred dollars' 
worth of taxable property. Both conventions 
limited the right to vote on questions of taxation 
to payers of a property tax. Each convention 
then adjourned to meet again after the people had 
voted on the constitution it favored. 

[ 117 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

The result as to the people's constitution was 
announced, in January 1842, to be ratification by 
a large majority, and that the constitution there- 
fore ought to be and was the paramount law and 
constitution of the State of Rhode Island and 
Providence Plantations. 

In March 1842, the people were called on to vote 
on the freemen's constitution. Sixteen thousand 
seven hundred and two votes were cast — 8,013 
for and 8,689 against it, and it was defeated. So 
stood the contest when the General Assembly, in 
April 1842, enacted a law " In Relation to Offenses 
against the State," but really against the people's 
constitution. After a preamble declaring that 
certain designing persons had framed and were 
attempting to put in operation a plan to subvert 
the government of the state, it was enacted that 
all meetings for the election of state officers other 
than those provided for by law were illegal and 
void; that moderators, wardens and clerks of 
such meetings would be deemed guilty of mis- 
demeanors and fined and imprisoned, and that 
persons taking a state office because of such elec- 
tion would be guilty of treason and imprisoned 
for life. The suffragists dubbed this the Algerine 
Law, and went on with their elections under their 
constitution. Thomas W. Dorr was chosen gov- 
ernor, Amasa Eddy, Jr., lieutenant-governor, and 
other party leaders were made secretary of state, 
general treasurer, and attorney-general. A gen- 
eral assembly was also chosen. 

[ n8 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

Two days later the Charter election took 
place, when Samuel W. King was elected gov- 
ernor. 

Under the Algerine Law one hundred and 
eighty persons by their acts had made themselves 
liable to arrest and punishment. Five had been 
elected to general offices of state, eighty-nine 
were members of the house, and twelve of the 
senate, and the rest were sheriffs or had acted as 
moderators or clerks of the elections. The ques- 
tion then was, will the charter government arrest 
these men or quietly suffer the people's govern- 
ment to go into operation? The question was 
still unanswered when May 3d came, and in the 
presence of a great crowd of citizens the People's 
General Assembly took possession of an unfinished 
foundry in Providence, organized, listened to the 
inaugural address of Governor Dorr, and after a 
session of two days adjourned to meet again in 
July. 

May 4th the Charter Assembly gathered at 
Newport and resolved that, " Whereas, a portion 
of the people had formed a pretended constitution 
and had met in lawless assemblages and elected 
state officers, and had organized executive and 
legislative departments of government ; therefore, 
there existed in the State of Rhode Island an 
insurrection against the constituted authority, 
and that a requisition should be made by the 
legislature on the President of the United States 
forthwith to interpose the authority and power 

[ 119 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

of the United States to protect the state from 
domestic violence. ' ' 

Acting under the instructions, Governor King 
at once sent off the requisition to President Tyler, 
and on the same day a similar cry for help was 
despatched to the president by Governor Dorr, 
who promptly followed his messengers to Wash- 
ington. Scarcely was he out of the state when 
arrests for treason began, and in course of three 
days seven of the People's party were under bonds 
to stand trial. Alarmed at this show of energy 
other members of the Dorr government began, 
one by one, to resign, and the report was circu- 
lated that Dorr had fled the state. 

This rumor was false, and on May 15th, Dorr, 
on his way back from Washington, reached Ston- 
ington, Connecticut, and was escorted thence to 
Providence by some two hundred of his party, 
spoke from a carriage to an audience of several 
thousand, and made his headquarters in the house 
of one of his followers. Some cannon belonging 
to the state were now seized, and about midnight 
on May 17th, an armed band of Dorrites having 
come in from Woonsocket, orders were issued to 
attack the arsenal. Before dawn, accordingly, 
the little army with Dorr in command wound its 
way through the city streets, drew up before the 
arsenal, made a demand for its surrender, and 
when this was refused twice attempted to fire on 
the building with cannon. Each time there was 
a flash in the pan, and after these dismal failures 

[ 120 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

the little army began to dissolve, and Dorr, with 
a few followers dragged the useless guns back to 
headquarters. There he was informed that all 
members of his government living in Providence 
had resigned, and he fled to Woonsocket, and 
then to New York. 

More resignations now followed, and the 
People's Government seemed in a state of collapse. 
The governor had fled, the legislature could not 
have mustered a quorum, and no state officer was 
attempting to attend to the duties of his office. 

But the end was not yet. Encouraged by 
friends in New York, Dorr returned, gathered a 
few followers at the little town of Chepatchet, 
near the Connecticut border, and began to fortify 
a camp on a spot called Acote's Hill. Against 
this the state forces now move with great deliber- 
ation, to find when they reached the spot that 
Dorr had fled and his army melted away. Then 
the state authorities grew bold. Hundreds of 
arrests were made, martial law was declared, Dorr 
was proclaimed a traitor, one thousand and then 
five thousand dollars' reward was offered for his 
arrest, and requisitions for his return were made 
on the governors of neighboring states. During 
more than a year Dorr remained a fugitive, but 
at last in 1843, he returned to Providence, was 
arrested, tried, found guilty of treason and sen- 
tenced to imprisonment for life. This, in the 
opinion of the people, was wholly unnecessary 
severity. A movement for his liberation was 

[ 121 ] 



The Acquisition of the Political, Social 

started and carried to the polls, and on this issue 
a ' ' liberation ' ' governor was elected, and in June 
1845, Dorr was set free. In 1 851, the legislature 
restored to him civil and political rights, and in 
1854, reviewed and annulled the judgment of the 
Supreme Court of Rhode Island and ordered the 
clerk to write across the record of the judgment 
the words " Reversed and annulled by order of 
the General Assembly. ' ' Long ere this time his 
efforts bore fruit, and in 1843, Rhode Island 
framed a written constitution which forbade slav- 
ery and liberalized the franchise. 

And here we may safely leave the subject. 
The story of the yet greater struggle for the rights 
of man during the last half of the century is too 
long and too complicated to be even summarized. 
It is enough to know that the rights of the black 
man, the rights of children, the rights of women, 
the rights of workingmen have received in the 
last fifty years a recognition never before given 
them. The free common school, the wise system 
of factory legislation, the reduction of the work- 
ing day from sixteen hours to ten and even eight, 
the abolition of slavery, the gradual opening to 
the women of the professions of law and medicine, 
and of innumerable fields of labor from which, 
fifty years ago they were absolutely shut out, 
have produced an amount of human happiness 
which it is not possible to rightly estimate. 

It is enough to know that the principles laid 
down by our forefathers have not been repudiated ; 

[ 122 ] 



and Industrial Rights of Man in America 

that we have, by a steady, well-ordered progress 
been drawing nearer and nearer to the conditions 
of life our forefathers so fondly pictured ; that at 
no time in our history has life been held more 
sacred, liberty been less restrained, the opportuni- 
ties for the pursuit of happiness so many. Never 
did our government so nearly derive its just 
powers from the consent of the governed, and 
never did the governed so fully recognize as self- 
evident truths the three inalienable rights of man. 



[ 123 ] 



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